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UNBTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 



PRACTICAL ESSAYS. 



WORKS OF 

Alexander Bain, LL.D, 



LOGIC, Deductive and Inductive. New revised edi- 
tion. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00. 

MENTAL SCIENCE : A Compendium of Psychology 
and History of Philosophy. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50." 

MORAL SCIENCE: A Compendium of Ethics. 12mo. 
Cloth, $1.50. 

MIND AND BODY. The Theories of their Relations. 
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entific Series.") 12mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

THE SENSES AND THE INTELLECT. New edi- 
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D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 

1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, New York. 



PRACTICAL ESSAYS. 



ALEXANDER BAIN, LL. D., 

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 



i 



NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

I, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 
1884. 



PREFACE. 



The present volume is in great part a reprint 
of articles contributed to Reviews. The prin- 
cipal bond of union among them is their 
practical character. Beyond that, there is little 
to connect them apart from the individuality 
of the author and the range of his studies. 

That there is a certain amount of novelty in 
the various suggestions here embodied, will be 
admitted on the most cursory perusal. The 
farther question of their worth is necessarily 
left open. 

The first two essays are applications of the 
laws of mind to some prevailing Errors. 

The next two have an educational bearing : 
the one is on the subjects proper for Competi- 
tive Examinations ; the other, on the present 



position of the much vexed Classical contro- 
versy. 

The fifth considers the range of Philosophical 
or Metaphysical Study, and the mode of con- 
ducting this study in Debating Societies. 

The sixth contains a retrospect of the growth 
of the Universities, with more especial reference 
to those of Scotland ; and also a discussion of 
the University Ideal, as something more than 
professional teaching. 

The seventh is a chapter omitted from the 
author's " Science of Education " ; it is mainly 
devoted to the methods of self-education by 
means of books. • The situation thus assumed 
has peculiarities that admit of being handled 
apart from the general theory of Education. 

The eighth contends for the extension of 
liberty of thought, as regards Sectarian Creeds 
and Subscription to Articles. The total eman- 
cipation of the clerical body from the thraldom 
of subscription, is here advocated without reser- 
vation. 

The concluding essay discusses the Pro- 
cedure of Deliberative Bodies. Its novelty 
lies chiefly in proposing to carry out, more 
thoroughly than has yet been done, a few 



devices already familiar. But for an extraor- 
dinary reluctance in all quarters to adapt simple 
and obvious remedies to a growing evil, the 
article need never have appeared. It so hap- 
pens, that the case principally before the public 
mind at present, is the deadlock in the House 
of Commons; yet, had that stood alone, the 
author would not have ventured to meddle 
with the subject. The difficulty, however, is 
widely felt : and the principles here put forward 
are perfectly general; being applicable wher- 
ever deliberative bodies are numerously con- 
stituted and heavily laden with business. 

Aberdeen, March, 18S4. 



CONTENTS. 



COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

Error regarding Mind as a whole — that Mind can be exerted with- 
out bodily expenditure, . . . 
Errors with regard to the FEELINGS, .... 

I. Advice to take on cheerfulness, .... 
Authorities for this prescription, .... 
Presumptions against our ability to comply with it, . 
Concurrence of the cheerful temperament with youth and health, 
With special corporeal vigour. With absence of care and anxiety, 
Limitation of Force applies to the mind, 

The only means of rescuing from dullness — to increase the supports 

and diminish the burdens of life, ... 

Difficulties in the choice of amusements, 

II. Prescribing certain tastes, or pursuits, to persons indiscrimi 

nately, ....... 

Tastes must repose as natural endowment, or else in prolonged edu 
cation, ....... 

III. Inverted relationship of Feelings and Imagination, 
Imagination does not determine Feeling, but the reverse, 
Examples :— Bacon, Shelley, Byron, Burke, Chalmers, the Orientals 

the Chinese, the Celt, and the Saxon, . . . , 

IV. Fallaciousness of the view, that happiness is best gained by not 

being aimed at, . 
Seemingly a self-contradiction, .... 

Butler's view of the disinterestedness of Appetite, 
Apart from pleasure and pain, Appetite would not move us, . 
Parallel from other ends of pursuit — Health, . 
Life has two aims — Happiness and Virtue — each to be sought directly 

on its own account, ...... 

Errors connected with the Will, .... 

I. Cost of energy of Will. Need of a suitable physical confirmation 
Courage, Prudence, Belief, ..... 

II. Free-will a centre of various fallacies, . . 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Doctrines repudiated from the offence given to personal dignity. 

Operation of this on the history of Free-will, . 29 

III. Departing from the usual rendering of a fact, treated as denying 

the fact, ........ 3 2 

Metaphysical and Ethical examples, . . . . 33 

Alliance of Mind and Matter, ...... ib. 

Perception of a Material World, .... ...:..... . > • 34 

IV. The terms Freedom and Necessity miss the real point of the 

human will, ........ 36 

V. Moral Ability and Inability. — Fallacy of seizing a question by the 

wrong end, . ' ' . ... . 37 

Proper signification of Moral Inability— insufficiency of the ordinary 

motives, but not of all motives, ..... 39 

II. 

ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

Meanings of Relativity— intellectual and emotional, . - .43 

All impressions greatest at first. Law of Accommodation and habit, 44 
The pleasure of rest presupposes toil, . . . . .45 

Knowledge has its charm from previous ignorance, . .. . ib. 

Silence is of value, after excess of speech, . . . .46 

Previous pain not, in all cases, necessary to pleasure, . . ib. 

Simplicity of Style praiseworthy only under prevailing artificiality, . 47 
To extol Knowledge is to reprobate Ignorance, . . .48 

Authority appealed to, when in our favour, repudiated when against 

us, . . . . . ' . . .49 

Fallacy of declaring all labour honourable alike, . . , ib. 

The happiness of Justice supposes reciprocity, . . 51 

Love and Benevolence need to be reciprocated, . . -53 

The moral nature of God — a fallacy of suppressed correlative, . 54 

A perpetual miracle — a self-contradiction, .... ib. 

Fallacy that, in the world, everything is mysterious, . . 55 

Proper meaning of Mystery, ...... 56 

Locke and Newton on the true nature ©f Explanation, . . 57 

The Understanding cannot transcend its own experience. — Time and 

Space, their Infinity, . . . . . .58 

We can assimilate facts, and generalise the many into one. This 

alone constitutes Explanation, ..... 63 
Example from Gravity : not now mysterious, . . ... 64 

Body and Mind. In what ways the mysteriousness of their union 

might be done away with, ..... 65 



CONTENTS. 

III. 

THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

I. Historical Sketch. 

First official recommendation of Competitive Examinations, . 

Successive steps towards their adoption, 

First absolutely open Competition — in the India Service, 

Macaulay's Report on the subjects for examination and their values. 

Table of Subjects. Innovations of Lord Salisbury, . 

An amended Table, ...... 



PAGE 

7i 

72 

73 
74 
76 
79 



II. The Scheme Considered. 

Doubts expressed as to the expediency of the competitive'system, . 80 
Criticism of the present prescription for the higher Services, . . 81 

The Commissioners' Scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science 

objectionable, . . . . . . ib. 

Classification of the Sciences into Abstract or fundamental, and Con- 
crete or derivative, ...... 82 

Those of the first class have a fixed order, the order of dependence, . 83 
The other class is represented by the Natural History Sciences, which 

bring into play the Logic of Classification, . . .84 

Each of these is allied to one or other members of the primary 

Sciences, ........ ib. 

The Commissioners' Table misstates the relationships of the various 

Sciences, ........ 85 

The London University Scheme a better model, . . .87 

The choice allowed by the Commissioners not foun led on a proper 

principle, ....... 88 

The higher Mathematics encouraged to excess, . . .90 

Amended scheme of comparative values, . . . .91 

Position of Languages in the examinations, . . . .92 

The place in education of Language generally, . . . ib. 

Purposes of Language acquisition, ..... ib. 

Altered position of the Classical languages, . . . -93 

Alleged benefits of these languages, after ceasing to be valuable in 

their original use, ...... 94 

The teaching of the languages does not correspond to these secon- 
dary values, ....... 97 

Languages are not a proper subject for competition with a view to 

appointments, ....... 101 

For foreign service, there should be a pass examination in the lan- 
guages needful, ....... 102 



XU CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The training powers attributed to languages should be tested in its 

own character, ....... 104 

Instead of the Languages of Greece, Rome, &c., substitute the History 

and Literature, ....... 105 

Allocation of marks under this view, . . . . .107 

Objections answered, ....... 108 

Certain subjects should be obligatory, . . , . .110 

IV. 

THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY. 

Its Present Aspect. 

Attack on Classics by Combe, fifty years ago, .... 115 
Alternative proposals at the present day : — 

1. The existing system, . . . . , .116 
Attempts at extending the Science course under this system, . . 117 

2. Remitting Greek in favour of a modern language. A defective 

arrangement, . . . . . . .119 

3. Remitting both Latin and Greek in favour of French and German, 121 

4. Complete bifurcation of the Classical and the Modern sides, . 122 
The Universities must be prepared to admit a thorough modern alter- 
native course, ........ ib. 

Latin should not be compulsory in the modern side, . . . 124 

Defences of Classics, . . . . . . .126 

The argument from the Greeks knowing only their own language — 

never answered, ....... ib. 

Admission that the teaching of classics needs improvement, . . 127 

Alleged results of contact with the great authors of Greece and 

Rome — unsupported by facts, . . , . . .129 

Amount of benefit attainable without knowledge of originals, . 132 

The element of training may be obtained from modern languages, . ib. 
The classics said to keep the mind free from party bias, . . 133 

Canon Liddon's argument in favour of Greek as a study, . . 134 

V. 

METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

Metaphysics here taken as comprising Psychology, Logic, and their 

dependent sciences, ...... 139 

Importance of the two fundamental departments, . . . 140 

The great problems, such as Free-will and External Perception, 

should be run up into systematic Psychology, . . I41 

Logic also requires to be followed out systematically, . . 142 

Slender connection of Logic and Psychology, . . 144 



Derivative Sciences : — Education, 

^Esthetics — a corner of the larger field of Human Happiness 
The treatment of Happiness should be dissevered from Ethics, 
Adam Smith's loose rendering of the conditions of happiness 
Sociology — treated, partly in its own field, and partly as a deriva- 
tive of Psychology, .... 
Through it lies the way to Ethics, 
The sociological and the ethical ends compared, 
Factitious applications of Metaphysical study, 
Bearings on Theology, as regards both attack and defence, 
Incapable of supplying the place of Theology, 
Polemical handling of Metaphysics, 
Methodised Debate in the Greek Schools, 
Much must always be done by the solitary thinker, . 
Best openings for Polemic : — Settling the meanings of terms, 
Discussing the broader generalities, .... 
The Debate a fight for mastery, and ill-suited for nice adjustments 
The Essay should be a centre of amicable co-operation, which would 

have special advantages, 
Avoidance of such debates as are from their very nature interminable 



THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL— PAST AND PRESENT. 



The Higher Teaching in Greece, . 

The Middle Age and Boethius, .... 

Eve of the University, ...... 

Separation of Philosophy from Theology, 

The Universities of Scotland founded — their history, . 

First Period.— The Teaching Body, .... 

The Subjects taught and manner of teaching, 

Second Period. — The Reformation, 

Modified Curriculum— Andrew Melville, 

Attempted reforms in teaching, .... 

System of Disputation, ..... 

Improvements constituting the transition to the Third Period, 

The Universities and the political revolutions, 

How far the Universities are essential to professional teaching : pe: 

ennial alternative of Apprenticeship, . 
The Ideal Graduate, . . . , . 



CONTENTS. 



VII. 



THE ART OF STUDY. 

Study more immediately supposes learning from Books, 
The Greeks did not found an Art of Study, but afforded 

Demosthenes, .... 
Quintilian's " Institutes" a landmark, 
Bacon's Essay on Studies. Hobbes, . 
Milton's Tractate on Education, 
Locke's " Conduct of the Understanding" very specific as 

of Study, .... 

Watts's work entitled " The Improvement of the Mind," 
What an Art of Study should attempt, 
Mode of approaching it, . 

1. First Maxim — " Select a Text-book-in-chief," 
Violations of the maxim : Milton's system, 
Form or Method to be looked to, in the chief text-boo] 
The Sciences. History, 
Non-methodical subjects, 
Repudiation of plans of study by some, 
Merits to be sought in a principal Text-book, 
Question as between old writers and new, 
Paradoxical extreme — one book and no more, 
Single all-sufficing books do not exist, 
Illustration from Locke's treatment of the Bible, 

II. "What constitutes the study of a book ? " 
i. Copying literally :— Defects of this plan, . 

2. Committing to memory word for word, 
Profitable only for brief portions of a book, . 
Memory in extension and intension, . 

3. Making Abstracts, .... 
Variety of modes of abstracting, 

4. Locke's plan of reading, 
A sense of Form must concur with abstracting, 
Example from the Practice of Medicine, 

Example from the Oratorical Art, . „__ . 

Choice of a series of Speeches to begin "ttpon, 

An oratorical scheme essential, 

Exemplary Speeches, .... 

Illustration from the oratorical quality of negative tact. Macaulay 

Speeches on Reform, 
Study for improvement in Style, 

III. Distributing the Attention in Reading, . 



PAGE 

203 



205 
206 



209 
210 
212 

21S 
ib. 



219 
ib. 



222 
223 
224 
225 
226 



230 
ib. 
231 
232 
234 
236 
237 
238 
240 
241 
242 
243 

245 
247 
248 



XV 



IV. Desultory Reading, . . . -. 

V. Proportion of book-reading to Observation at first hand, 

VI. Adjuncts of Reading. — Conversation, 
Original Composition,. . . . . , 



PAGE 

250 

251 

252 

253 



RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

Pursuit of Truth has. three departments :— order of nature, ends of 
practice, and the supernatural, .... 

Growth of Intolerance. How innovations became possible, . 

In early society, religion a part of the civil government, 

Beginnings of toleration — dissentients from the State Church, 

Evils attendant on Subscription: — the practice inherently fallacious. 

Enforcement of creeds nugatory for the end in view . 

Dogmatic uniformity only a part of the religious character : element 
of Feeling, . ... . , . . . 

Recital of the general argument for religious liberty, . 

Beginnings of prosecution for heresy in Greece :— . Anaxagoras, 
crates, Plato, Aristotle, ..... 

Forced reticence in recent times :— Carlyle, Macaulay, Lyell, 

Evil of disfranchising the Clerical class, 

Outspokenness a virtue to be encouraged, 

Special necessities of the present time : conflict of advancing know- 
ledge with the received orthodoxy, 

Objections answered : — The Church has engaged itself to the State 
to teach given tenets, „ . 

Possible abuse of freedom by the clergy, 

The history of the English Presbyterian Church exemplifies th 
absence of Subscription, .... 

Various modes of transition from the prevailing practice, . 



257 
261 
263 
264 
265 



270 

272 

273 
274 

275 

276 



281 

ib. 



284 
287 



IX. 

PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES.. 

Growing evil of the intolerable length of Debates, 

Hurried decisions might be obviated by allowing an interval previous 

to the vote, . . . . 

The oral debate reviewed. — Assumptions underlying it, fully 

amined, ..... 
Evidence that, in Parliament, it is not the main engine of persuasion 
Its real service is to supply the newspaper reports, 
Printing, without speaking, would serve the end in view, 



294 
295 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Proposal to print and distribute beforehand the reasons for each 

Motion, ........ 298 

Illustration from decisions on Reports of Committees, . . 299 

Movers of Amendments to follow the same course, . . . 300 
Further proposal to give to each member the liberty of circulating a 

speech in print, instead of delivering it, ... ib. 

The dramatic element in legislation much thought of, . . 302 

Comparison of the advantages of reading and of listening, . . ib. 
The numbers of backers to a motion should be proportioned to the 

size of the assembly, ...... 303 

Absurdity of giving so much power to individuals, . . . 304 

In the House of Commons twenty backers to each bill not too many, 305 

The advantages of printed speeches. Objections, . . . 307 

Unworkability of the plan in Committees. How remedied, . . 308 
In putting questions to Ministers, there should be at least ten 

backers, ........ 310 

How to compensate for the suppression of oratory in the House :— 

Sectional discussions, . • . ■ . . . . 311 
The divisions occasioned at one sitting to be taken at the beginning 

of the next, ....... 312 

Every deliberative body must be free to determine what amount of 

speaking it requires, ...... 313 

The English Parliamentary system considered as a model, . . 314 

Lord Derby and Lord Sherbrook on the extension of printing, . 315 

Defects of the present system becoming more apparent, . . 317 

Notes and References in connection with Essay VIII. on Subscription. 

First imposition of Tests after the English Reformation, . . 319 

Dean Milman's speech in favour of total abolition of Tests, . . 321 

Tests in Scotland : Mr. Taylor Innes on the " Law of Creeds," . 323 

Resumption of Subscription in the English Presbyterian Church, . 324 

Other English Dissenting Churches, . . . . . ib. 

Presbyterian Church in the United States, .... ib. 

French Protestant Church — its two divisions, .... 325 

Switzerland: — Canton of Vaud, . . . . 328 

Independent Evangelical Church of Neuchatel, . . . 329 

National Protestant Church of Geneva, .... ib. 

Free Church of Geneva. Germanic Switzerland, . . . 332 

Hungarian Reformed Church, . . . . . ib. 

Germany : — Recent prosecutions for heresy, .... 333 

Holland :— Calvinists and Modem School, .... 336 



I. 

COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 



COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 



Of the prevailing errors on the mind, proposed to be 
considered in this paper, some relate to the Feelings, 
others to the Will. 

In regard to Mind as a whole, there are still to be 
found among us some remnants of a mistake, once 
universally prevalent and deeply rooted, namely, the 
opinion that mind is not only a different fact from 
body — which is true, and a vital and fundamental truth 
— but is to a greater or less extent independent of the 
body. In former times, the remark seldom occurred 
to any one, unless obtruded by some extreme in- 
stance, that to work the mind is also to work a number 
of bodily organs ; that not a feeling can arise, not a 
thought can pass, without a set of concurring bodily 
processes. At the present day, however, this doctrine 
is very generally preached by men of science. The im- 
proved treatment of the insane has been one conse- 
quence of its reception. The husbanding of mental 
power, through a bodily regime, is a no less important 
application. Instead of supposing that mind is some- 
thing indefinite, elastic, inexhaustible, — a sort of per- 
petual motion, or magician's bottle, all expenditure, 

1 Fortnightly Review, August, 1 868. 



4 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND, 

and no supply, — we now find that every single throb of 
pleasure, every smart of pain, every purpose, thought, 
argument, imagination, must have its fixed quota of 
oxygen, carbon, and other materials, combined and 
transformed in certain physical organs. And, as the 
possible extent of physical transformation in each 
person's framework is limited in amount, the forces 
resulting cannot be directed to one purpose without 
being lost for other purposes. If an extra share passes 
to the muscles, there is less for the nerves; if the 
cerebral functions are pushed to excess, other func- 
tions have to be correspondingly abated. In several 
of the prevailing opinions about to be criticised, failure 
to recognise this cardinal truth is the prime source of 
mistake. 

To begin with the FEELINGS. 

I. We shall first consider an advice or prescription 
repeatedly put forth, not merely by the unthinking 
mass, but by men of high repute : it is, that with a 
view to happiness, to virtue, and to the accomplish- 
ment of great designs, we should all be cheerful, light- 
hearted, gay. 

I quote a passage from the writings of one of the 
Apostolic Fathers, the Pastor of Hermas, as given in 
Dr. Donaldson's abstract : — 

" Command tenth affirms that sadness is the sister 
" of doubt ; mistrust, and wrath ; that it is worse than 
" all other spirits, and grieves the Holy Spirit. It is 
" therefore to be completely driven away, and, instead 
" of it, we are to put on cheerfulness, which is pleas- 



FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING CHEERFULNESS. 5 

■ ■ ing to God. ' Every cheerful man works well, and 
" always thinks those things which are good, and des- 
" pises sadness. The sad man, on the other hand, is 
"always bad.' " x 

Dugald Stewart inculcates Good-humour as a 
means of happiness and virtue ; his language im- 
plying that the quality is one within our power to 
appropriate. 

In Mr. Smiles's work entitled " Self-Help," we find 
an analogous strain of remarks : — 

" To wait patiently, however, man must work cheer- 
" fully. Cheerfulness is an excellent working quality, 
"imparting great elasticity to the character. As a 
" Bishop has said, ' Temper is nine-tenths of Christi- 
" anity,' so are cheerfulness and diligence [a consider- 
" able make-weight] nine-tenths of practical wisdom." 

Sir Arthur Helps, in those essays of his, combining 
profound observation with strong genial sympathies 
and the highest charms of style, repeatedly adverts to 
the dulness, the want of sunny light-hearted enjoy- 
ment of the English temperament, and, on one occa- 
sion, piquantly quotes the remark of Froissart on our 
Saxon progenitors : " They took their pleasures sadly, 
as was their fashion ; Us se divertirent moult tristement 
a la mode de leur pays!' 

There is no dispute as to the value or the desirable- 
ness of this accomplishment. Hume, in his '" Life," 
says of himself, "he was ever disposed to see the 
favourable more than the unfavourable side of things ; 

Donaldson's " History of Christian Literature and Doctrine," Vol. 
I., P- 277. 



6 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess 
than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year ". 
This sanguine, happy temper, is merely another form 
of the cheerfulness recommended to general adop- 
tion. 

I contend, nevertheless, that to bid a man be habitu- 
ally cheerful, he not being so already, is like bidding 
him treble his fortune, or add a cubit to his stature. 
The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament 
partly belongs to the original cast of the constitution 
- — like the bone, the muscle, the power of memory, 
the aptitude for science or for music ; and is partly 
the outcome of the whole manner of life. In order to 
sustain the quality, the physical (as the support of the 
mental) forces of the system must run largely in one 
particular channel ; and, of course, as the same forces 
are not available elsewhere, so notable a feature of 
strength will bfe accompanied with counterpart weak- 
nesses or deficiencies. Let us briefly review the facts 
bearing upon the point. 

The first presumption in favour of the position is 
grounded in the concomitance of the cheerful tem- 
perament with youth, health, abundant nourishment. 
It appears conspicuously along with whatever pro- 
motes physical vigour. The state is partially attained 
during holidays, in salubrious climates, and health- 
bringing avocations ; it is lost in the midst of toils, in 
privation of comforts, and in physical prostration. 
The seeming exception of elated spirits in bodily de- 
cay, in fasting, and in ascetic practices, is no disproof 
of the general principle, but merely the introduction 



LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS NOT IN OUR OWN POWER. 1 

of another principle, namely, that we can feed one 
part of the system at the expense of degrading and 
prematurely wasting others. 

A second presumption is furnished also from our 
familiar experience. The high-pitched, hilarious tem- 
perament and disposition commonly appear in com- 
pany with some well-marked characteristics of cor- 
poreal vigour. Such persons are usually of a robust 
mould ; often large and full in person, vigorous in 
circulation and in digestion ; able for fatigue, en- 
durance, and exhausting pleasures. An eminent 
example of this constitution was seen in Charles 
James Fox, whose sociability, cheerfulness, gaiety, 
and power of dissipation were the marvel of his age. 
Another example might be quoted in the admirable 
physical frame of Lord Palmerston. It is no more 
possible for an ordinarily constituted person to emu- 
late the flow and the animation of these men, than it 
is to digest with another person's stomach, or to per- 
form the twelve labours of Hercules. 

A third fact, less on the surface, but no less certain, 
is, that the men of cheerful and buoyant tempera- 
ment, as a rule, sit easy to the cares and obligations 
of life. They are not much given to care and anxiety 
as regards their own affairs, and it is not to be ex- 
pected that they should be more anxious about other 
people's. In point of fact, this is the constitution of 
somewhat easy virtue : it is not distinguished by a 
severe, rigid attention to the obligations and the 
punctualities of life. We should not be justified in 
calling such persons selfish ; still less should we call 



8 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

them cold-hearted : their exuberance overflows upon 
others in the form of heartiness, geniality, joviality, 
and even lavish generosity. Still, they can seldom 
be got to look far before them ; they do not often 
assume the painfully circumspect attitude required in 
the more arduous enterprises. They are not con- 
scientious in trifles. They cast off readily the bur- 
densome parts of life. All which is in keeping with 
our principle. To take on burdens and cares is to 
draw upon the vital forces — to leave so much the less 
to cheerfulness and buoyant spirits. The same cor- 
poreal framework ccnnot afford a lavish expenditure 
in several different ways at one time. Fox had no 
long-sightedness, no tendency to forecast evils, or to 
burden himself with possible misfortunes. It is 
very doubtful if Palmerston could have borne the part 
of Wellington in the Peninsula ; his easy-going tem- 
perament would not have submitted itself to all the 
anxieties and precautions of that vast enterprise. 
But Palmerston was hale and buoyant, and the Prime 
Minister of England at eighty : Wellington began to 
be infirm at sixty. 

To these three experimental proofs we may add 
the confirmation derived from the grand doctrine 
named the Correlation, Conservation, Persistence, or. 
Limitation of Force, as applied to the human body 
and the human mind. We cannot create force any- 
where ; we merely appropriate existing force. The 
heat of our fires has been derived from the solar fire. 
We cannot lift a weight in the hand without the com- 
bustion of a certain amount of food ; we cannot think 



LIMITATIONS OF THE MENTAL FORCES. 9 

a thought without a similar demand ; and the force 
that goes in one way is unavailable in any other way. 
While we are expending ourselves largely in any 
single function — in muscular exercise, in digestion, in 
thought and feeling, the remaining functions must 
continue for the time in comparative abeyance. 
Now, the maintenance of a high strain of elated 
feeling, unquestionably costs a great deal to the forces 
of the system. All the facts confirm this high esti- 
mate. An unusually copious supply of arterial blood 
to the brain is an indispensable requisite, even al- 
though other organs should be partially starved, and 
consequently be left in a weak condition, or else 
deteriorate before their time. To support the exces- 
sive demand of power for one object, less must be 
exacted from other functions. Hard bodily labour 
and severe mental application sap the very foun- 
dations of buoyancy ; they may not entail much 
positive suffering, but they are scarcely compatible 
with exuberant spirits. There may be exceptional 
individuals whose total of power is a very large figure, 
who can bear more work, endure more privation, 
and yet display more buoyancy, without shortened 
life, than the average human being. Hardly any man 
can attain commanding greatness without being con- 
stituted larger than his fellows in the sum of human 
vitality. But until this is proved to be the fact in 
any given instance, we are safe in presuming that 
extraordinary endowment in one thing implies de- 
ficiency in other things. More especially must we 
conclude, provisionally at least, that a buoyant, hope- 



IO COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

ful, elated temperament lacks some other virtues, 
aptitudes, or powers, such as are seen flourishing in the 
men whose temperament is sombre, inclining to 
despondency. Most commonly the contradictory 
demand is reconciled by the proverbial "short life 
and merry". 

Adverting now to the object that Helps had so 
earnestly at heart — namely, to rouse and rescue the 
English population from their comparative dulness to 
a more lively and cheerful flow of existence — let us 
reflect how, upon the foregoing principles, this is to 
be done. Not certainly by an eloquent appeal to the 
nation to get up and be amused. The process will 
turn out to be a more circuitous one. 

The mental conformation of the English people, 
which we may admit to be less lively and less easily 
amused than the temperament of Irishmen, French- 
men, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch 
of our own Teutonic race, is what it is from natural 
causes, whether remote descent, or that coupled with 
the operation of climate and other local peculiarities. 
How long would it take, and what would be the way 
to establish in us a second nature on the point of 
cheerfulness ? 

Again, with the national temperament such as it is, 
there may be great individual differences ; and it may 
be possible by force of circumstances, to improve the 
hilarity and the buoyancy of any given person. Many 
of our countrymen are as joyous themselves, and as 
much the cause of joy in others, as the most light- 
hearted Irishman, or the gayest Frenchman or Italian. 



SOLE MEANS OF ATTAINING CHEERFULNESS. II 

How shall we increase the number of such, so as to 
make them the rule rather than the exception ? 

The only answer not at variance with the laws of 
the human constitution is — Increase the supports and 
diminish the burdens of life. 

For example, if by any means you can raise the 
standard of health and longevity, you will at once 
effect a stride in the direction sought. But what an 
undertaking is this ! It is not merely setting up what 
we call sanitary arrangements, to which, in our 
crowded populations, there must soon be a limit 
reached (for how can you secure to the mass of men 
even the one condition of sufficient breathing-space ?) ; 
it is that health cannot be attained, in any high 
general standard, without worldly means far above 
the average at the disposal of the existing population ; 
while the most abundant resources are often neutral- 
ised by ineradicable hereditary taint. To which it is 
to be added, that mankind can hardly as yet be said 
to be in earnest in the matter of health. 

Farther : it is especially necessary to cheerfulness, 
that a man should not be overworked, as many of us 
are, whether from choice or from necessity. Much, I 
believe, turns upon this circumstance. Severe toil 
consumes the forces of the constitution, without leaving 
the remainder requisite for hilarity of tone. The 
Irishman fed upon three meals of potatoes a day, 
the lazy Highlander, the Lazaroni of Naples living 
upon sixpence a week, are very poorly supported ; 
but then their vitality is so little drawn upon by work, 
that they may exceed in buoyancy of spirits the well- 



12 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

fed but hard-worked labourer. We, the English 
people, would not change places with them, notwith- 
standing : our ideal is industry with abundance ; but 
then our industry sobers our temperament, and in- 
clines us to the dulness that Helps regrets. Possibly, 
we may one day hit a happier mean ; but to the human 
mind extremes have generally been found easiest. 

Once more : the light-hearted races trouble them- 
selves little about their political constitution, about 
despotism or liberty ; they enjoy the passing moments 
of a despot's smiles, and if he turns round and crushes 
them, they quietly submit. We live in dread of 
tyranny. Our liberty is a serious object ; it weighs 
upon our minds. Now any weight upon the mind is 
so much taken from our happiness ; hilarity may 
attend on poverty, but not so well on a serious, fore- 
casting disposition. Our regard to the future makes 
us both personally industrious and politically anxious ; 
a temper not to be amused with the relaxations of 
the Parisian in his cafe on the boulevards, or with the 
Sunday merry-go-round of the light-hearted Dane. 
Our very pleasures have still a sadness in them. 

Then, again, what are to be our amusements ? By 
what recreative stimulants shall we irradiate the 
gloom of our idle hours and vacation periods? 
Doubtless there have been many amusements in- 
vented by the benefactors of our species — society, 
games, music, public entertainments, books ; and in a 
well-chosen round of these, many contrive to pass 
their time in a tolerable flow of satisfaction. But 
they all cost something ; they all cost money, either 



FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING TASTES. 1 3 

directly, to procure them, or indirectly, to be edu- 
cated for them. There are few very cheap plea- 
sures. Books are not so difficult to obtain, but 
the enjoying of them in any high degree implies an 
amount of cultivation that cannot be had cheaply. 

Moreover, look at the difficulties that beset the 
pursuit of amusements. How fatiguing are they very 
often ! How hard to distribute the time and the 
strength between them and our work or our duties ! 
It needs some art to steer one's way in the midst of 
variety of pleasures. Hence there will always be, in 
a cautious-minded people, a disposition to remain 
satisfied with few and safe delights ; to assume a 
sobriety of aims that Helps might call dulness, but 
that many of us call the middle path. 

II. A second error against the limits of the human 
powers is the prescribing to persons indiscriminately, 
certain tastes, pursuits, and subjects of interest, on the 
ground that what is a spring of enjoyment to one or 
a few may be taken up, as a matter of course, by 
others with the same relish. It is, indeed, a part of 
happiness to have some taste, occupation, or pursuit, 
adequate to charm and engross us — a ruling passion, 
a favourite study. Accordingly, the victims of dul- 
ness and ennui are often advised to betake themselves 
to something of this potent character. Kingsley, in 
his little book on the "Wonders of the Shore," endea- 
voured to convert mankind at large into marine 
naturalists ; and, some time ago, there appeared in 
the newspapers a letter from Carlyle, regretting that 



14 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

he himself had not been indoctrinated into the 
zoology of our waysides. I have heard a man out of 
health, hypochondriac, and idle, recommended to 
begin botany, geology, or chemistry, as a diversion of 
his misery, The idea is plausible and superficial. 
An overpowering taste for any subject — botany, 
zoology, antiquities, music — is properly affirmed to be 
born with a man. The forces of the brain must from 
the first incline largely to that one species of impres- 
sions, to which must be added years of engrossing 
pursuit. We may gaze with envy at the fervour of a 
botanist over his dried plants, and may wish to take 
up so fascinating a pursuit : we may just as easily 
wish to be Archimedes when he leaped out of the 
bath ; a man cannot re-cast his brain nor re-live his 
life. A taste of a high order, founded on natural en- 
dowment, formed by education, and strengthened by 
active devotion, is also paid for by the atrophy of 
other tastes, pursuits, and powers. Carlyle might 
have contracted an interest in frogs, and spiders, and 
bees, and the other denizens of the wayside, but it 
would have been with the surrender of some other 
interest, the diversion of his genius out of its present 
channels. The strong emotions of the mind are not 
to be turned off and on, to this subject and to that. 
If you begin early with a human being, you may 
impress a particular direction upon the feelings, you 
may even cross a natural tendency, and work up a 
taste on a small basis of predisposition. Place any 
youth in the midst of artists, and you may induce a 
taste for art that shall at length be decided and 



RELATION OF FEELINGS TO IMAGINATION. 1 5 

strong. But if you were to take the same person in 
middle life and immure him in a laboratory, that he 
might become an enthusiastic chemist, the limits of 
human nature would probably forbid your success. 

Such very strong tastes as impart a high and 
perennial zest to one's life are merely the special 
direction of a natural exuberance of feeling or emotion. 
A spare and thin emotional temperament will un- 
doubtedly have preferences, likings and dislikings, 
but it can never supply the material for fervour or 
enthusiasm in anything. 

The early determining of natural tastes is a subject 
of high practical interest We shall only remark at 
present that a varied and broad groundwork of 
early education is the best known device for this 
end. 

III. A third error, deserving of brief comment, is a 
singular inversion of the relationship of the Feelings 
to the Imagination. It is frequently affirmed, both 
in criticism and in philosophy, that the Feelings de- 
pend upon, or have their basis in, the Imagination. 

An able and polished writer, discussing the cha- 
racter of Edmund Burke, remarks : " The passions of 
Burke were strong ; this is attributable in great 
measure to the intensity of the imaginative faculty ". 
Again, Dugald Stewart, observing upon the influence 
of the Imagination on Happiness, says : " All that 
part of our happiness or misery which arises from our 
hopes or our fears derives its existence entirely from 
the power of imagination ". He even goes the length 



1 6 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

of affirming that "cowardice is entirely a disease of 
the imagination ". Another writer accounts for the 
intensity of the amatory sentiments in Robert Burns 
by the strength of his imagination. 

Now, I venture to affirm that this view very nearly 
reverses the fact. The Imagination is determined by 
the Feelings, and not the Feelings by the Imagina- 
tion. Intensity of feeling, emotion, or passion, is the 
earlier fact : the intellect swayed and controlled by 
feeling, shaping forms to correspond with an existing 
emotional tone, is Imagination. It was not the 
imaginative faculty that gave Wordsworth, Byron, 
Shelley, and the poets generally, their great enjoy- 
ment of nature ; but the love of nature, pre-existing, 
turned the attention and the thoughts upon nature, 
filling the mind as a consequence with the impres- 
sions, images, recollections of nature; out of which grew 
the poetic imaginings. Imagination is a compound 
of intellectual power and feeling. The intellectual 
power may be great, but if it is not accompanied with 
feeling, it will not minister to feeling ; or it will 
minister to many feelings by turns, and to none in 
particular. As far as the intellectual power of a poet 
goes, few men have excelled Bacon. He had a mind 
stored with imagery, able to produce various and 
vivid illustrations of whatever thought came before 
him ; but these illustrations touched no deep feeling ; 
they were fresh, original, racy, fanciful, picturesque, a 
play of the head that never touched the heart The 
man was by nature cold ; he had not the emotional 
depth or compass of an average Englishman. Per- 



IMAGINATION GROUNDED IN FEELING. 1 7 

haps his strongest feeling of an enlarged or generous 
description was for human progress, but it did not rise 
to passion ; there was no fervour, no fury in it. Com- 
pare him with Shelley on the same subject, and you 
will see the difference between meagreness and in- 
tensity of feeling. What intellect can be, without 
strong feeling, we have in Bacon ; what intellect is, 
with strong feeling, we have in Shelley. The feeling 
gives the tone to the thoughts ; sets the intellect at 
work to find language having its own intensity, to pile 
up lofty and impressive circumstances ; and then we 
have the poet, the orator, the thoughts that breathe, 
and the words that burn. Bacon wrote on many 
impressive themes — on Truth, on Love, on Religion, 
on Death, and on the Virtues in detail ; he was 
always original, illustrative, fanciful ; if intellectual 
means and resources could make a man feel in these 
things, he would have felt deeply ; yet he never did. 
The material of feeling is not contained in the in- 
tellect ; it has a seat and a source apart. There was 
nothing in "mere intellectual gifts to make Byron a 
misanthrope : but, given that state of the feelings, the 
intellect would be detained and engrossed by it ; 
would minister to, expand, and illustrate it ; . and 
intellect so employed is Imagination. 

Burke had indisputably a powerful imagination 
He had both elements : — the intellectual power, or 
the richly stored and highly productive mind ; and 
the emotional power, or the strength of passion 
that gives the lead to intellect. His intellectual 
strength was often put forth in the Baconian manner 



1 8 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

of illustration, in light and sportive fancies. There 
were many occasions where his feelings were not 
much roused. He had topics to urge, views to ex- 
press, and he poured out arguments, and enlivened 
them with illustrations. He was, on those occasions, 
an able expounder, and no more. But when his 
passions were stirred to the depths by the French 
Revolution, his intellectual power, taking a new flight, 
supplied him with figures of extraordinary intensity ; 
ft was no longer the play of a cool man, but the 
thunders of an aroused man ; we have then " the 
hoofs of the swinish multitude," — " the ten thousand 
swords leaping from their scabbards ". Such feelings 
were not produced by the speaker's imagination : they 
were produced by themselves ; they had their inde- 
pendent source in the region of feeling : coupled with 
adequate powers of intellect, they burst out into strong 
imagery. 1 

1 Intensity of passion stands confessed in the self-delineations of men 
of imaginative genius. We forbear to quote the familiar instances of 
Wordsworth, Shelley, or Burns, but may refer to a remarkable chapter 
in the life of the famous Scotch preacher, Dr. Thomas Chalmers. The 
mere title of the chapter is enough for our purpose. It related to his 
early youth, and ran thus, in his own words : — "A year of mental 
elysium". It is while living at a white-heat that all the thoughts and 
conceptions take a lofty, hyperbolical character ; and the outpouring oi 
these at the time, or afterwards, is the imagination of the orator or the 
poet. 

The spread of the misconception that we have been combating is 
perhaps accounted for by the circumstance that imagination in one man 
is the cause of feeling in others. Wordsworth, by his imaginative 
colouring, has excited a warmer sentiment for nature in many spectators 
of the lake country. That, however, is a different thing. We may 
also allow that the poet intensifies his own feelings by his creative em- 
bodiments of them. 



HOW HAPPINESS SHOULD BE AIMED AT. 1 9 

The Orientals, as a rule, are distinguished for 
imaginative flights. This is apparent in their reli- 
gion, their morality, their poetry, and their science. 
The explanation is to be sought in the strength of 
their feelings, coupled with a certain intellectual force. 
The same intellect, without the feelings, would have 
issued differently. The Chinese are the exception. 
They want the feelings, and they want the imagi- 
nation. They are below Europeans in this respect. 
When we bring before them our own imaginative 
themes, our own cast of religion, accommodated as 
it is to our own peculiar temperament, we fail in 
the desired effect. Our august mysteries are res- 
ponded to, not with reverential regard, but with 
cold analysis. 

The Celt and the Saxon are often contrasted on 
the point of imagination ; the prior fact is the com- 
parative endowment for emotion. 

IV. There is a fallacious mode of presenting the 
attainment of happiness ; namely, that happiness is 
best secured by not being aimed at. We should be 
aiming always at something else. 

When examined closely, the doctrine resolves itself 
into a kind of paradox. All sorts of puzzles come up 
when we attempt to follow it to its consequences. 

We might ask, first, whether there is any other 
object of pursuit in the same predicament — wealth, 
health, knowledge, fame, power. These are, every 
one, a means or instrument of happiness, if not happi- 
ness itself. Must we, then, in the case of each, avoid 



20 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

aiming straight at the goal ? must we look askance 
in some other direction ? 

Next, in the case of happiness proper, are we to 
aim at nothing at all, to drift at random ; or may we 
aim at a definite object, provided it is not happiness ; 
or, lastly, is there one side aim in particular that we 
must take ? The answer here would probably be — 
Aim at duty in general, and at the good of others in 
particular. These ends are not the same as happi- 
ness, yet by keeping them steadily in the view, and 
not thinking of self at all, we shall eventually realise 
our greatest happiness. 

Without, at present, raising any question as to the 
fact alleged, we must again remark that the prescrip- 
tion seems to contradict itself. Moralists of the 
austere type will never allow us to pursue happiness 
at all ; we must never mention the thing to ourselves: 
duty or virtue is the one single aim and end of being. 
Such teachers may be right or they may be wrong, 
but they do not contradict themselves. When, how- 
ever, we are told that by aiming at virtue, we are on 
the best possible road to happiness, this is but 
another way of letting us into the secret of happiness, 
of putting us on the right, instead of on the wrong, 
track, to attain it. Our teacher assumes that we are 
in search of happiness, and he tells us how we are to 
proceed ; not by keeping it straight in the view, but by 
keeping virtue straight in the view. Instead of point- 
ing us to the vulgar happiness-seeker who would take 
the goal in a line, he corrects the course, and shows 
us the deviation that is necessary in order to arrive 



INDIRECT AIM RECOMMENDED. 21 

at it ; like the sailor making allowance for the devia- 
tion of the magnetic pole, in steering. Happiness is 
not gained by a point-blank aim ; we must take a 
boomerang flight in some other line, and come back 
upon the target by an oblique or reflected movement. 
It is the idea of Young on the Love of Praise (Satire 
U 50- 

The love of Praise howe'er concealed by art, 
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart, 
The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure, 
The modest shun it but to make if sure. 

Under this corrected method, we are happiness 
seekers all the same ; only our aims are better 
directed, and our fruition more assured. 

These remarks are intended to show that the 
doctrine of making men aim at virtue, in order to 
happiness, has no further effect than to teach us to 
include the interests of others with our own ; by 
showing that our own interests do not thereby suffer, 
but the contrary. The doctrine does not substitute a 
virtuous motive for a selfish one ; it is a refined arti- 
fice for squaring the two. The world is no doubt a 
gainer by the change of view, although the individual 
is not made really more meritorious. 

We must next consider whether, in fact, the oblique 
aim at happiness is really the most effectual. 

A few words, first, as to the original source of the 
doctrine of a devious course. Bishop Butler is re- 
nowned for his distinction between Self-Love and 
Appetite ; he contends that in Appetite the object of 
pursuit is not the pleasure of eating, but the food: 



2 2 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

consequently, eating is not properly a self-seeking 
act, it is an indifferent or disinterested act, to which 
there is an incidental accompaniment of pleasure. 
We should, under the stimulus of Hunger, seek the 
food, whether it gave us pleasure or not. 

Now, any truth that there is in Butler's view 
amounts to this : — In our Appetites we are not think- 
ing every instant of subduing pain and attaining 
pleasure ; we are ultimately moved by these feelings ; 
but, having once seen that the medium of their grati- 
fication is a certain material object (food), we direct 
our whole aim to procuring that. The hungry wolf 
ceases to think of his pains of hunger when he is in 
sight of a sheep ; but for these pains he would have 
paid no heed to the sheep ; yet when the sheep has 
to be caught, the hunger is submerged for the time ; 
the only relevant course, even on its account, is to 
give the whole mind and body to the chase of the 
sheep. Butler calls this indifferent or disinterested 
pursuit ; and as much as says, that the wolf is not 
self-seeking, but sheep-seeking, in its chase. Now, it 
is quite true that if the wolf could give no place in its 
mind for anything but its hungry pains, it would be 
in a bad way. It is wiser than that ; it knows the 
remedy ; it is prepared to dismiss the pains from its 
thoughts, in favour of a concentrated attention upon 
the distant flock. This proves nothing as to its 
unselfishness ; nor does it prove that Appetite is a 
different thing from self-seeking or self-love. 

There may be disinterested motives in our consti- 
tution ; but Appetite is not in any sense one of these. 



APPETITE DECLARED UNSELFISH. 23 

We may have instincts answering to the traditional 
phrase used in denning instinct, " a blind propensity " 
to act, without aiming at anything in particular, and 
without any expectation of pleasure or benefit Such 
instincts would conform to Butler's notion of appetite: 
they would lie entirely out of the course of self-love 
or self-seeking of any sort. Whether the nest-build- 
ing activity of birds, and the constructiveness of ants, 
bees, and beavers, comply with this condition, I do not 
undertake to say. There is one process better known 
to ourselves, not exactly an instinct, but probably a 
mixture of instinct and acquirement — I mean the 
process of Imitation — which works very much upon 
this model. Although coming under the control of 
the Will, yet in its own proper character it operates 
blindly, or without purpose ; neither courting plea- 
sure, nor chasing pain. In like manner, Sympathy, in 
its most characteristic form, proceeds without any 
distinct aim of pleasure to ourselves. 

Nothing of this can be affirmed of the Appetites. 
In them, nature places us, as Bentham says, under 
the government of two sovereign masters, pain and 
pleasure. An appetite would cease to move us, if its 
painful and pleasurable accompaniments were done 
away with. It matters not that we remit our atten- 
tion, at times, to the pain or the pleasure ; these are 
always in the background ; and the strength of the 
appetite is their strength. 

So far as concerns Butler's example of the Appe- 
tites, there is no case for the view that to obtain 
happiness we must avoid aiming at it directly. If we 



24 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

do not aim at the pleasure in its own subjective 
character, we aim at the thing that immediately 
brings the pleasure ; which is, for all practical pur- 
poses, to aim at the pleasure. 

The prescription to look away from the final end, 
Happiness, in order to secure that end, may be tested 
on the example of one of our intermediate pursuits, 
as Health. It is not a good thing to be always 
dwelling on the state of our health : by doing so, we 
get into a morbid condition of self-consciousness, which 
is in itself pernicious. It does not follow that we are 
to live at random, without ever giving a thought to 
our health. There is a plain middle course. Guided 
by our own experience, and by the experience of 
those that have gone before us, we arrange our plan 
of life so as to preserve health ; and our actions con- 
sist in adhering to that plan in the detail. So long 
as our scheme answers expectation, we think of noth- 
ing but of putting it in force, as occasion arises ; we 
do not dwell upon our states of good health at all. 
It is some interruption that makes us self-conscious ; 
and then it is that we have to exercise ourselves about 
a remedial course. This, when found, is likewise ob- 
jectively pursued ; our only subjectiveness lies in being 
aware of gradual recovery ; and we are glad to get 
back to the state of paying no attention to the work- 
ings of our viscera. We do not, therefore, remit our 
pursuit ; only, it is enough to observe the routine 
of outward actions, whose sole motive is to keep us 
in health. 

The pursuit of the still wider end, Happiness, has 



HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE DISTINCT AIMS. 25 

much in common with the narrower pursuit. When 
we have discovered what things promote, and what 
things impede our happiness, we transfer our atten- 
tion to these, as the most direct mode of compassing 
the end. If we are satisfied that working for other 
people brings us happiness, we work accordingly ; 
this is no side aim, it is as direct as any aim can be. 
It may involve immediate sacrifice, but that does not 
alter the case ; we can get no considerable happiness 
from any source without temporary sacrifice. 

If it be said that the best mode of attaining happi- 
ness is to put ourselves entirely out of account, and to 
work for others exclusively, this, as already noted, 
is a self-contradiction. It is to tell people not to 
think of their own happiness, and yet to know that 
they are securing that in the most effectual way. It 
is also very questionable, indeed absolutely erroneous, 
in fact. The most apparent way to secure happiness 
is to ply all the known means of happiness, just as far 
as, and no farther than, they are discovered to produce 
the effect. We must keep a check upon the methods 
that we employ, and abandon those that do not 
answer. So long as we find happiness in serving 
others, so long we continue in that course. And it is 
a melancholy fact that Pope's bold assertion — " Virtue 
alone is happiness below," — cannot be upheld against 
the stern realities of life. Life needs to be made up 
of two aims — the one, Happiness, the other Virtue, 
each on its own account. There is a certain mutual 
connection of the two, but all attempts at making out 
their identity are failures. 



26 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

It is of very great importance to teach men the 
bearings of virtue on happiness, so far as these are 
known. There will, however, always remain a por- 
tion of duty that detracts from happiness, and must 
be done as duty, nevertheless. Men are entitled to 
pursue happiness as directly as ever they please ; 
only, they must couple with the pursuit their round 
of duties to others ; in which they may or may not 
reap a share of the coveted good for self. 

Let us, next, consider some of the difficulties and 
mistakes attaching to the Will. Here there are the 
questions of world-renown, questions known even 
in Pandemonium — Free-will, Responsibility, MOral 
Ability, and Inability. It is now suspected, on 
good grounds, that, on these questions, we have 
somehow got into a wrong groove — that we are 
lost in a maze of our own constructing. 

I. We shall first notice a misconception akin to 
some of the foregoing mistakes respecting the feel- 
ings. In addressing men with a view to spur their 
activity, there is usually a too low estimate of what is 
implied in great and energetic efforts of will. Here, 
exactly as in the cheerful temperament, we find a 
certain constitutional endowment, a certain natural 
force of character, having its physical supports of 
brain, muscle, and other tissue ; and neither persua- 
sion, nor even education, can go very far to alter that 
character. If there be anything at all in the observa- 
tions of phrenology, it is the connection of energetic 
determination with size of brain. Lay your hand 



A STRONG WILL THE GIFT OF NATURE. 27 

first on the head of an energetic man, and then on 
the head of a feeble man, and you will find a differ- 
ence that is not to be explained away. Now it 
passes all the powers of persuasion and education 
combined to make up for a great cranial inequality. 
Something always comes of assiduous discipline ; but 
to set up a King Alfred, or a Luther, as a model to 
be imitated by an ordinary man, on the points of 
energy, perseverance, endurance, courage, is to pass 
the bounds of the human constitution. Persistent 
energy of a high order, like the temperament for 
happiness, costs a great deal to the human system. 
A large share of the total forces of the constitution 
go to support it ; and the diversion of power often 
leaves great defects in other parts of the character, as 
for example, a low order of the sensibilities, and a 
narrow range of sympathies. The men of extra- 
ordinary vigour and activity — our Roman emperors 
and conquering heroes — are often brutal and coarse. 
Nature does not supply power profusely on all sides ; 
and delicate sympathies, of themselves, use up a very 
large fraction of the forces of the organisation. Even 
intellectually estimated, the power of sympathising 
with many various minds and conditions would oc- 
cupy as much room in the brain as a language, or an 
accomplishment. A man both energetic and sympa- 
thetic — a Pericles, a King Alfred, an Oliver Cromwell 
— is one of nature's giants, several men in one. 

There is no more notable phase of our active 
nature than Courage. Great energy generally implies 
great courage, and courage — at least in nine-tenths of 



28 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

its amount — comes by nature. To exhort any one to 
be courageous is waste of words. We may animate, 
for the time, a naturally timid person, by explaining 
away the signs of danger, and by assuming a confi- 
dent attitude ourselves ; but the absolute force of 
courage is what neither we nor the man himself can 
add to. A long and careful education might effect a 
slight increase in this, as in other aspects of energy 
of character : we can hardly say how much, because 
it is a matter that is scarcely ever subjected to the 
trial ; the very conditions of the experiment have not 
been thought of. 

The moral qualities expressed by Prudence, Fore- 
thought, Circumspection, are talked of with a like 
insufficient estimate of what they cost. Great are the 
rewards of prudence, but great also is the expenditure 
of the prudent man. To retain an abiding sense of 
all the possible evils, risks and contingencies of an 
ordinary man's position — professional, family, and 
personal — is to go about under a constant burden ; 
the difference between a thorough-going and an easy- 
going circumspection is a large additional demand 
upon the forces of the brain. The being on the alert 
to duck the head at every bullet is a charge to the 
vital powers ; so much so, that there comes a point 
when it is better to run risks than to pile up costly 
precautions and bear worrying anxieties. 

Lastly, the attribute of our active nature called 
Belief, Confidence, Conviction, is subject to the same 
line of remark. This great quality — the opposite 
of distrust and timidity, the ally of courage, the 



PREJUDICES DUE TO PERSONAL DIGNITY. 29 

adjunct of a buoyant temperament — is not fed upon 
airy nothings. It is, indeed, a true mental quality, 
an offshoot of our mental nature ; yet, although not 
material', it is based upon certain forces of the physical 
constitution ; it grows when these grow, and is 
nourished when they are nourished. People possessed 
of great confidence have it as a gift all through life, 
like a broad chest or a good digestion. Preaching 
and education have their fractional efficacy, and de- 
serve to be plied, provided the operator is aware of 
nature's impassable barriers, and does not suppose 
that he is working by charm. It is said of Hannibal 
that he dissolved obstructions in the Alps by vinegar; 
in the moral world, barriers are not to be removed 
either by acetic acid or by honey. 

II. The question of Free-will might be a text for 
discoursing on some of the most inveterate erroneous 
tendencies of the mind. 

For one thing, it gives occasion to remark on the 
influence exerted over our opinions by the feeling ot 
Personal Dignity. Of sources of bias, prejudices, 
"Idola," "fallacies a priori" this may be allowed pre- 
cedence. For example, the maxim has been enunci- 
ated by some philosophers, that, of two differing 
opinions, preference is to be given (not to what is 
true, but) to what ennobles and dignifies human 
nature. One of the objections seriously entertained 
against Darwin's theory is that it humbles our ances- 
tral pride. So, to ascribe to our mental powers a 
material foundation is held to be degrading to our 



30 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

nobler part. Again, a philosopher of our own day — - 
Sir W. Hamilton — has placed on the title-page of his 
principal work this piece of rhetoric: "On earth, 
there is nothing great but man ; in man, there is 
nothing great but mind ". Now one would suppose 
that there are on earth many things besides man de- 
serving the appellation of " great " ; and that the 
mechanism of the body is, in any view, quite as re- 
markable a piece of work as the mechanism of the 
mind. There was one step more that Hamilton, as an 
Aristotelian, should have made : " In mind, there is 
nothing great but intellect" Doubtless, we ought not 
to dissect an epigram ; but epigrams brought into a 
perverting contact with science are not harmless. 
Such gross pandering to human vanity must be held 
as disfiguring a work on philosophy. 

The sentiment of dignity has much to answer 
for in the doctrine of Free-will. In Aristotle, the 
question had not assumed its modern perplexity ; but 
the vicious element of factitious personal importance 
had already peeped out, it being one of the few points 
wherein the bias of the feelings operated decidedly in 
his well-balanced mind. In maintaining the doctrine 
that vice is voluntary, he argues, that if virtue is 
voluntary, vice (its opposite) must also be voluntary ; 
now to assert virtue not to be voluntary would be to 
cast an indignity upon it. This is the earliest associa- 
tion of the feeling of personal dignity with the 
exercise of the human will. 

The Stoics are commonly said to have started the 
free-will difficulty. This needs an explanation. A 



FALSE PRIDE IN CONNECTION WITH FREE-WILL. 3 1 

leading tenet of theirs was the distinction between 
things in our power and things not in our power; and 
they greatly overstrained the limits of what is in 
our power. Looking at the sentiment about death, 
where the idea is everything, and at many of our 
desires and aversions, also purely sentimental, that is, 
made and unmade by our education (as, for example, 
pride of birth), they considered that pains in general, 
even physical pains and grief for the loss of friends, 
could be got over by a mental discipline, by intel- 
lectually holding them not to be pains. They extolled 
and magnified the power of the will that could 
command such a transcendent discipline, and infused 
an emotion of pride into the consciousness of this 
greatness of will. In subsequent ages, poets, moralists, 
and theologians followed up the theme ; and the 
appeal to the pride of will may be said to be a 
standing engine of moral suasion. This originating 
of a point of honour or dignity in connection with 
our Will has been the main lure in bringing us into 
the jungle of Free-will and Necessity. 

It is in the Alexandrian school that we find the 
next move in the question. In Philo Judaeus, the 
good man is spoken of as free, the wicked man as a 
slave. Except as the medium of a compliment to 
virtue, the word "freedom" is not very apposite, seeing 
that, to the highest goodness, there attaches submis- 
sion or restraint, rather than liberty. 

The early Christian Fathers (notably Augustine) 
advanced the question to the Theological stage, by 
connecting it with the great doctrines of Original Sin 



32 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

and Predestination ; in which stage it shared all the 
speculative difficulties attaching to these doctrines. 
The Theological world, however, has always been 
divided between Free-will and Necessity ; and pro- 
bably the weightiest names are to be found among 
the Necessitarians. No man ever brought greater 
acumen into theological controversy than did Jona- 
than Edwards ; and he took the side of Necessity. 

Latterly, however, since the question has become 
one of pure metaphysics, Free-will has been the 
favourite dogma, as being most consonant to the 
dignity of man, which appears to be its chief recom- 
mendation, and its only argument. The weight of 
reasoning is, I believe, in favour of necessity ; but the 
word carries with it a seeming affront, and hardly 
any amount of argument will reconcile men to in- 
dignity. 

III. Another weakness of the human mind receives 
illustration from the free-will controversy, and de- 
serves to be noticed, as helping to account for the 
prolonged existence of the dispute : I mean the 
disposition to regard any departure from the accus- 
tomed rendering of a fact as denying the fact itself. 
The rose under another name is not merely less 
sweet, it is not a rose at all. Some of the greatest 
questions have suffered by this weakness. 

The physical theory of matter that resolves it into 
points of force will seem to many as doing away with 
matter no less effectually than the Berkeleyan Ideal- 
ism. A universe of inane mathematical points, 



ANALYSIS DOES NOT DESTROY THE FACT. 33 

attracting and repelling each other, must appear to 
the ordinary mind a sorry substitute for the firm-set 
earth, and the majestically-fretted vault of heaven, 
with its planets, stars, and galaxies. It takes a 
special education to reconcile any one to this theory. 
Even if it were everything that a scientific hypothesis 
should be, the previously established modes of speech 
would be a permanent obstruction to its being re- 
ceived as the popular doctrine. 

But the best illustrations occur in the Ethical and 
Metaphysical departments. For example, some 
ethical theorists endeavour to show that Conscience 
is not a primitive and distinct power of the mind, like 
the sense of colour, or the feeling of resistance, but a 
growth and a compound, being made up of various 
primitive impulses, together with a process of educa- 
tion. Again and again has this view been repre- 
sented as denying conscience altogether. Exactly 
parallel has been the handling of the sentiment of 
Benevolence. Some have attempted to resolve it into 
simpler elements of the mind, and have been attacked 
as denying the existence of the sentiment. Hobbes, 
in particular, has been subjected to this treatment. 
Because he held pity to be a form of self-love, his 
opponents charged him with declaring that there is 
no such thing as pity or sympathy in the human 
constitution. 

A more notable example is the doctrine of the 
alliance of Mind with Matter. It is impossible that any 
mode of viewing this alliance can erase the distinc- 
tion between the two modes of existence — the 
3 



34 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

material and the mental ; between extended inert 
bodies, on the one hand, and pleasures and pains, 
thoughts and volitions, on the other. Yet, after the 
world has been made familiar with the Cartesian 
doctrine of two distinct substances — the one for the 
inherence of material facts, and the other for mental 
facts — any thinker maintaining the separate mental 
substance to be unproved, and unnecessary, is de- 
nounced as trying to blot out our mental existence, 
and to resolve us into watches, steam-engines, or 
speaking and calculating machines. The upholder of 
the single substance has to spend himself in protesta- 
tions that he is not denying the existence of the fact, 
or the phenomena called mind, but is merely chal- 
lenging an arbitrary and unfounded hypothesis for 
representing that fact. 

The still greater controversy — distinct from the 
foregoing, although often confounded with it — relating 
to the Perception of a Material World, is the crowning 
instance of the weakness we are considering. Ber- 
keley has been unceasingly stigmatised as holding 
that there is no material world, merely because he 
exposed a self-contradiction in the mode of viewing it, 
common to the vulgar and to philosophers, and sug- 
gested a mode of escaping the contradiction by an 
altered rendering of the facts. The case is very 
peculiar. The received and self-contradictory view is 
exceedingly simple and intelligible in its statement ; 
it is well adapted, not merely for all the commoner 
purposes of life, but even for most scientific purposes. 
The supposition of an independent material world, 



PERCEPTION OF A MATERIAL WORLD. 35 

and an independent mental world, created apart, and 
coming into mutual contact — the one the objects per- 
ceived, and the other the mind perceiving — expresses 
(or over-expresses) the division of the sciences into 
sciences of matter and sciences of mind ; and the 
highest laws of the material world at least are in no 
respect falsified by it. On the other hand, any 
attempt to state the facts of the outer world on 
Berkeley's plan, or on any plan that avoids the self- 
contradiction, is most cumbrous and unmanageable. 
A smaller, but exactly parallel instance of the situa- 
tion is familiar to us. The daily circuit of the sun 
around the earth, supposed to be fixed, so exactly 
answers all the common uses that, in spite of its 
being false, we adhere to it in the language of every- 
day life. It is a convenient misrepresentation, and 
deceives nobody. And such will, in all likelihood, be 
the usage regarding the external world, after the 
contradiction is admitted, and rectified by a meta- 
physical circumlocution. Speculators are still only 
trying their hand at an unobjectionable circumlocu- 
tion ; but we may almost be sure that nothing will 
ever supersede, for practical uses, the notion of the 
distinct worlds of Mind and Matter. If, after the 
Copernican demonstration of the true position of the 
sun, we still find it requisite to keep up the fiction of 
his daily course ; much more, after the final accom- 
plishment of the Berkeleyan revolution (to my mind 
inevitable), shall we retain the fiction of an indepen- 
dent external world : only, we shall then know how 



36 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

to fall back upon some mode of stating the case, 
without incurring the contradiction. 

IV. To return to the Will. The fact that we have 
to save, and to represent in adequate language, is this : 
— A voluntary action is a sequence distinct and sui 
generis; a human being avoiding the cold, searching 
for food, and clinging to other beings, is not to be 
confounded with a pure material sequence, as the fall 
of rain, or the explosion of gunpowder. The pheno- 
mena, in both kinds, are phenomena of sequence, and 
of regular or uniform sequence ; but the things that 
make up the sequence are widely different : in the 
one, a feeling of the mind, or a concurrence of feel- 
ings, is followed by a conscious muscular exertion ; in 
the other, both steps are made up of purely material 
circumstances. It is the difference between a mental 
or psychological, and a material or physical sequence 
— in short, the difference between mind and matter ; 
the greatest contrast within the whole compass of 
nature, within the universe of being. Now language 
must be found to give ample explicitness to this 
diametrical antithesis ; still, I am satisfied that rarely 
in the usages of human speech has a more unfortunate 
choice been made than to employ, in the present 
instance, the antithetic couple — Freedom and Neces- 
sity. It misses the real point, and introduces meanings 
alien to the case. It converts the glory of the human 
character into a reproach (although its leading motive 
throughout has been to pay us a compliment). The 
constancy of man's emotional nature (but for which 



SEIZING A QUESTION BY THE WRONG END. 37 

our life would be a chaos, an impossibility) has to be 
explained away, for no other reason than that, at one 
time, a blundering epithet was applied to designate 
the mental sequences. Great is the difference between 
Mind and Matter ; but the terms Freedom and 
Necessity represent the point of agreement as the 
point of difference ; and this being made familiar, 
through iteration, as the mode of expressing the con- 
trast, the rectification is supposed to unsettle every- 
thing, and to obliterate the wide distinction of the 
two natures. 

V. What is called Moral Ability and Inability is 
another artificial perplexity in regard to the will, and 
might also be the text for a sermon on prevailing 
errors. More especially, it exemplifies what may- be 
termed seizing a question by the wrong end. 

The votary, we shall say, of alcoholic liquor is found 
fault with, and makes the excuse, he cannot help it — 
he cannot resist the temptation. So far, the language 
may pass. But what shall we say to the not uncom- 
mon reply, — You could help it if you would. Surely 
there is some mystification here ; it is not one of 
those plain statements that we desire in practical 
affairs. Whether we are dealing with matter or with 
mind, we ought to point out some clear and practicable 
method of attaining an end in view. To get a good 
crop, we till and enrich the soil ; to make a youth 
knowing in mathematics, we send him to a good 
master, and stimulate his attention by combined 
reward and punishment. There are also intelligible 



38 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

courses of reforming the vicious : withdraw them 
from temptation till their habits are remodelled ; 
entice them to other courses, by presenting objects of 
superior attraction ; or, at lowest, keep the fact of 
punishment before their eyes. By these methods 
many are kept from vices, and not a few reclaimed 
after having fallen. But to say, " You can be virtuous 
if you will," is either unmeaning, or it disguises a 
real meaning. If it have any force at all — and it 
would not be used unless some efficacy had been 
found attaching to it, — the force must lie in the 
indirect circumstances or accompaniments. What, 
then, is the meaning that is so unhappily expressed ? 
In the first place, it is a vehicle for conveying the 
strong wish and determination of the speaker ; it is a 
clumsy substitute for — " I do wish you would amend 
your conduct " ; an expression containing a real effi- 
cacy, greater or less according to the estimate formed 
of the speaker by the person spoken to. In the next 
place, it presents to the mind of the delinquent the 
ideal of improvement, which might also be done in 
unexceptionable phrase ; as one oight say — " Reflect 
upon your own state, and compare yourself with the 
correct and virtuous liver ". Then, there is a touch of 
the stoical dignity and pride of will. Lastly, there 
may be a hint or suggestion to the mind of good and 
evil consequences, which is the most powerful motive 
of all. In giving rise to these various considerations, 
even the objectionable expression may have a genuine 
efficacy ; but that does not justify the form itself, 



MEANING OF MORAL INABILITY. 39 

which by no interpretation can be construed into 
sense or intelligibility. 

Moral Inability means that ordinary motives are 
insufficient, but not all motives. The confirmed 
drunkard or thief has got into the stage of moral 
inability ; the common motives that keep mankind 
sober and honest have failed. Yet there are motives 
that would succeed, if we could command them. Men 
may be sometimes cured of intemperance when the 
constitution is so susceptible that pain follows at once 
on indulgence. And so long as pleasure and pain, in 
fact and in prospect, operate upon the will, so long as 
the individual is in a state wherein motives operate, 
there may be moral weakness, but there is nothing 
more. In such cases, punishment may be properly 
employed as a corrective, and is likely to answer its 
end. This is the state termed accountability, or, with 
more correctness, punishability, for being account- 
able is merely an incident bound up with liability to 
punishment. Moral weakness is a matter of a degree, 
and in its lowest grades shades into insanity, the state 
wherein motives have lost their usual power — when 
pleasure and pain cease to be apprehended by the 
mind in their proper character. At this point, punish- 
ment is unavailing ; the moral inability has passed 
into something like physical inability; the loss of 
self-control is as complete as if the muscles were 
paralysed. 

In the plea of insanity, entered on behalf of any 
one charged with crime, the business of the jury is to 
ascertain whether the accused is under the operation 



40 COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND. 

of the usual motives — whether pain in prospect has 
a deterring effect on the conduct. If a man is as 
ready to jump out of the window as to walk down- 
stairs, of course he is not a moral agent ; but so long 
as he observes, of his own accord, the usual precautions 
against harm to himself, he is to be punished for his 
misdeeds. 

These various questions repecting the Will, if 
stripped of unsuitable phraseology, are not very diffi- 
cult questions. They are about as easy to compre- 
hend as the air-pump, the law of refraction of light, 
or the atomic theory of chemistry. Distort them by 
inapposite metaphors, view them in perplexing atti- 
tudes, and you may make them more abstruse than 
the hardest proposition of the " Principia ". What is 
far worse, by involving a simple fact in inextricable 
contradictions, they have led people gravely to recog- 
nise self-contradiction as the natural and the proper 
condition of a certain class of questions. Consistency 
is very well so far, and for the humbler matters of 
every-day life, but there is a higher and a sacred 
region where it does not hold ; where the principles 
are to be received all the more readily that they land 
us in contradictions. In ordinary matters, inconsis- 
tency is the test of falsehood ; in transcendental 
subjects, it is accounted the badge of truth. 



II. 

ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 



ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED COR- 
RELATIVES. 1 



By Relativity is here meant the all-pervading fact 
of our nature that we are not impressed, made con- 
scious, or mentally alive, without some change of 
state or impression. An unvarying action on any of 
our senses is the same as no action at all. An even 
temperature, such as that enjoyed by the fishes in 
the tropical seas, leaves the mind an entire blank 
as regards heat and cold. We can neither feel nor 
know without recognising two distinct states. Hence 
all knowledge is double, or is the knowledge of con- 
trasts or opposites : heavy is relative to light ; up 
supposes down ; being awake implies the state of 
sleep. 

The applications of the law in the sphere of 
emotion are chiefly contemplated in what follows. 
Pleasure and pain are never absolute states ; they 
have reference always to the previous condition. 
Until we know what that has been in any case, we 
cannot pronounce upon the efficacy of a present 
stimulation. We see a person reposing, apparently 
in luxurious ease ; if the state has been immediately 

1 Fortnightly Review, October, 186S. 



44 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

consequent upon a protracted and severe exertion, 
we are right in calling it highly pleasurable. Under 
other circumstances, it might be quite the reverse. 

There is an offshoot or modification of the principle, 
arising out of the operation of habit. Impressions 
made upon us are greatest when they are absolutely 
new : after repetition they all lose something of their 
power ; although, by remission and alternative, the 
causes of pleasure and pain have still a very considerable 
efficacy. Many of the consequences of this great fact 
are sufficiently acknowledged, or, if they are not, it is 
from other causes than our ignorance. The weakness 
is moral, rather than intellectual, that makes us ex- 
pect that the first flush of a great pleasure, a newly- 
attained joy or success, will continue unabated. The 
poor man, probably, does not overrate the gratification 
of newly-attained wealth ; what he fails to allow for 
is the deadening effect of an unbroken experience of 
ease and plenty. The author of " Romola " says of 
the hero and the heroine, in the early moments of 
their affection, that they could not look forward to a 
time when their kisses should be common things. 
So it is with the attainment of all great objects of 
pursuit : the first access of good fortune may not dis- 
appoint us ; but as we are more and more removed 
from the state of privation, as the memory of the 
prior experience fades away, so does the vividness of 
the present enjoyment. It is the same with changes 
for the worse : the agony of a great loss is at first 
overpowering ; gradually, however, the system accom- 
modates itself to the new condition, and the severity 



RELATIVITY IN PLEASURES. 45 

dies away. What is called on these occasions the 
" force of custom " is the application of the law of 
Accommodation, or Relativity modified by habit. 

It is a familiar experience of mankind, yet hard 
to realise upon mere testimony, that the pleasures 
of rest, repose, retirement, are wholly relative to 
foregone labour and toil ; after the first shock of 
transition, they are less and less felt, and can be 
renewed only after a renewal of the contrasting ex- 
perience. The description, in " Paradise Lost," of 
the delicious repose of Adam and Eve in Eden is 
fallacious ; the poet credits them with an intensity of 
pleasure attainable only by the brow-sweating labourer 
under the curse. 

The delights of Knowledge are relative to previous 
Ignorance ; for, although the possession of knowledge 
is in many ways a lasting good, yet the full intensity 
of the charm is felt only at the moment of passing 
from mystery to explanation, from blankness of im- 
pression to intellectual attainment. This form of the 
pleasure is sustained only by new acquisitions and 
new discoveries. Moreover, in the minor forms of the 
gratification due to knowledge, we never escape the 
law of relativity ; the "power" delights us by relation 
to our previous impotence. Plato supposed that, in 
knowledge, we have an example of a pure pleasure, 
meaning one that had no reference to foregone priva- 
tion or pain ; but such " purity " would be a barren 
fact, not unlike the pure air of a bladeless and water- 
less desert. A state of uninterrupted good health, 
although a prime condition of enjoyment, is of itself 



46 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

a state of neutrality or indifference. The man that 
has never been ill cannot sing the joys of health ; 
the exultation of that strain is attainable only by 
the valetudinarian. 

These examples have been remarked upon in every 
age. It is the moral weakness of being carried away 
by a present strong feeling, as if the state would last 
for ever, that blinds each of us in turn to the stern 
reality of the fact. There are, however, numerous in- 
stances, coming under Relativity, wherein the indis- 
pensable correlative is more or less dropped out of sight 
and disavowed. These are the proper errors or fallacies 
of Relativity, a branch of the comprehensive class 
termed " Fallacies of Confusion ". The object of the 
present essay is to exhibit a few of these errors as 
they occur in questions of practical moment. 

When it is said, as by Carlyle and others, " speech 
is silvern, silence is golden," there is implied a condi- 
tion of things where speech has been in excess ; and 
but for this excess, the assertion is untrue. One 
might as well talk of the delights of hunger, or of 
cold, or of solitary confinement, on the ground of 
there being times when food, warmth, or society may 
be in excess, and when the opposing states would be 
a joyful change. 

The Relativity of Pleasures, although admitted in 
many individual cases, has often been misconceived. 
The view is sometimes expressed, that there can be 
no pleasure without a previous pain ; but this goes 



SIMPLICITY OF STYLE A RELATIVE MERIT. 47 

beyond the exigencies of the principle. We 
cannot go on for ever with any delight ; but mere 
remission, without any counterpart pain, is enough 
for our entering with zest on many of our pleasures. 
A healthy man enjoys his meals without any sensible 
previous pain of hunger. We do not need to have 
been miserable for some time as a preparation for the 
reading of a new poem. It is true that if the sense of 
privation has been acute, the pleasure is proportion- 
ally increased ; and that few pleasures of any great 
intensity grow up from indifference : still, remission 
and alternation may give a zest for enjoyment without 
any consciousness of pain. 

The principle of Comparison is capriciously made 
use of by Paley, in his account of the elements of 
Happiness. He applies it forcibly and felicitously to 
depreciate certain pleasures — as greatness, rank, and 
station — and withholds its application from the plea- 
sures that he more particularly countenances, — 
namely, the social affections, the exercise of the 
faculties, and health. 

The great praise often accorded to Simplicity of 
Style, in literature, is an example of the suppression 
of the correlative in a case of mutual relationship. 
Simplicity is not an absolute merit ; it is frequently a 
merit by correlation. Thus, if a certain subject has 
never been treated except in abstruse and difficult 
terminology, a man of surpassing literary powers, 
setting it forth in homely and intelligible language, 
produces a work whose highest praise is expressed by 



48 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

Simplicity. Again, after the last century period of 
artificial, complex, and highly-wrought composition, 
the reaction of Cowper and Wordsworth in favour of 
simplicity was an agreeable and refreshing change, 
and was in great part acceptable because of the 
change. It does not appear that Wordsworth com- 
prehended this obvious fact ; to him, a simplicity that 
cost nothing to the composer, and brought no novelty 
to the reader, had still a transcendent merit. 

It has been a frequent practice of late years to 
celebrate the praises of Knowledge. Many eloquent 
speakers have dilated on the happiness and the 
superiority of the enlightened and the cultivated man. 
Now, the correlative or obverse must be equally 
true : there must be a corresponding degradation and 
disqualification attaching to ignorance and the want 
of instruction. This correlative and equally cogent 
statement is suppressed on certain occasions, and by 
persons that would not demur to the praises of know- 
ledge : as, when we are told of the native good sense, 
the untaught sagacity, the admirable instincts of the 
people, — that is, of the ignorant or the uneducated. 
Hence the great value of the expository device of fol- 
lowing up every principle with its counter-statement, 
the matter denied when the principle is affirmed. 
If knowledge is a thing superlatively good, ignorance 
— the opposite of knowledge — is a thing superlatively 
bad. There is no middle standing ground. 

In the way that people use the argument from 



DIGNITY OF ALL LABOUR ABSURD. 49 

Authority, there is often an unfelt contradiction from 
not adverting to the correlative implication. If I lay 
stress upon some one's authority as lending weight to 
my opinion, I ought to be equally moved in the 
opposite direction when the same authority is against 
me. The common case, however, is to make a great 
flourish when the authority is one way, and to ignore 
it when it is the other way. This is especially the 
fashion in dealing with the ancient philosophers. 
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are quoted with much 
complacency when they chime in with a modern 
view ; but, in points where they contradict our 
cherished sentiments, we treat them with a kind of 
pity as half-informed pagans. It is not seen that 
men liable to such gross errors as they are alleged to 
have committed — say on Ethics — are by that fact 
deprived of all weight in allied subjects, as, for ex- 
ample, Politics — in which Aristotle is still quoted as 
an authority. 

Many of the sins against Relativity can be traced 
to rhetorical exaggeration. Some remarkable in- 
stances of this can be cited. 

When a system of ranks and dignities has once 
been established, there are associations of dignity and 
of indignity with different conditions and occupations. 
It is more dignified to serve in the army than to 
engage in trade; to be a surgeon is more honourable 
than to be a watchmaker. In this state of things a 
fervid rhetorician, eager to redress the inequalities of 
mankind, starts forth to preach the dignity of all 



50 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

labour. The device is a self-contradiction. Make all 
labour alike dignified, and nothing is dignified ; you 
simply abolish dignity by depriving it of the contrast 
that it subsists upon. 
Pope's lines — 

Honour and shame from no condition rise ; 
Act well your part ; there all the honour lies — 

cannot be exempted from the fallacy of self-contradic- 
tion. Differences of condition are made by differ- 
ences in the degree of honour thereto attached. If 
every man that did his work well were put on a level, 
in point of honour, with every other man that did the 
same ; if the gatekeeper of a mansion, by being unfail- 
ingly punctual in opening the gate, were to be equally 
honoured with a great leader of the House of Com- 
mons, then, indeed, equality of pay would be the 
only thing wanted to abolish all differences of condi- 
tion. There is, no doubt, in society, a quantity of 
misplaced honour ; but so long as there are employ- 
ments exceptionally arduous, and virtues signally 
beneficent in their operation, honour is a legitimate 
spur and reward, and should be graduated according 
to the desert in each case. 

In spurring the ardour of youth to studious exer- 
tion, it is common to repeat the Homeric maxim, "to 
supplant every one else, and stand out first". The 
stimulating effect is undoubted ; it is strong rhetori- 
cal brandy. Yet only one man can be first, and the 
exhortation is given simultaneously to a thousand. 1 

1 We may here recall an incident highly characteristic of the late 
Earl of Carlisle. Being elected on one occasion to the office of Lord 



JUSTICE ADMIRABLE ONLY IF RECIPROCATED. 5 1 

In the discussion and inculcation of the moral 
duties and virtues, there has been, in all ages, a 
tendency to suppress correlative facts, and to affirm 
unconditionally what is true only with a condition. 
Thus, the admirable nature of Justice, and the happi- 
ness of the Just man, are a proper theme to be 
extolled with all the power of eloquence. It has been 
so with every civilized people, pagan as well as 
Christian. In the dialogues of Plato, justice is a pro- 
minent subject, and is adorned with the full splendour 
of his genius. Aristotle, in one of the few moments 
when he rises to poetry, pronounces justice "greater 
than the evening-star or the morning-star ". Now all 
this panegyric is admissible only on the supposition 
of reciprocal justice. Plato, indeed, had the hardihood 
to say that the just man is happy in himself, and by 
reason of his justice, even although others are unjust 
to him ; but the position is untenable. A man is 
happy in his justice if it procure for him justice in 
return ; as a citizen is happy in his civil obedience, if 

Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, he had to deliver an address 
to the students on the usual topics of diligence and hopefulness in their 
studious career. Referring for a model to the addresses of former 
rectors, he found, in that of his immediate predecessor, Lord Eglinton, 
the Homeric sentiment above alluded to. It grated harshly on his mind, 
and he avowed the fact to the students. He could not reconcile himself 
to the elevating of one man upon the humiliation of all the rest. In a 
strain more befitting a civilized age, he urged upon his hearers the pursuit 
of excellence as such, without involving as a necessary accompaniment the 
supplanting or throwing down of other men. He probably did not 
sufficiently guard himself against a fallacy of Relativity ; for excellence 
is purely comparative ; it subsists upon inferior grades of attainment : 
still, there are many modes of it shared in by a great number, and not 
confined to one or a few. 



52 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

it gain him protection in return. There are two 
parties in the case, and the moralist should obtain 
access to both ; he should induce the one to fulfil his 
share before promising to the other the happiness of 
justice and obedience. It may be rhetorical, but it is 
not true, that justice will make a man happy in a 
society where it is not reciprocated. Justice, in these 
circumstances, is highly noble, praiseworthy, virtuous ; 
but the applying of these lofty compliments is the 
proof that it does not bring happiness, and is an 
attempt to compensate the deficiency. There is a 
certain tendency, not very great as human nature is 
constituted, for justice to beget justice in return — for 
social virtue on one side to procure it on the other 
side. This is a certain encouragement to each man 
to perform his own part, in hope that the other party 
concerned may do the same. Still, the reciprocity 
occasionally fails, and with that the benefits to the 
just agent. It is necessary to urge strongly upon 
individuals, to impress upon the young, the necessity 
of performing their duty to society ; it is equally 
implied, and equally indispensable, that society should 
perform its part to them. The suppressing of the 
correlative obligation of the State to the individ- 
ual leaves a one-sided doctrine ; the motive of the 
suppression, doubtless, is that society does not often 
fail of its duties to the individual, whereas individuals 
frequently fail of their duties to society. This may 
be the fact generally, but not always. It is not the 
fact where there are bad laws and corrupt adminis- 
tration. It is not the fact where the restraints on 



PLEASURES OF BENEVOLENCE CONDITIONAL. 53 

liberty are greater than the exigencies of the State 
demand. It is not the fact, so long as there is a 
single vestige of persecution for opinions. To be 
thoroughly veracious, for example, in a society that 
restrains the discussion and expression of opinions, is 
more than such a society is entitled to. 

The same fallacy occurs in an allied theme, — the 
joys of Love and Benevolence. That love and bene- 
volence are productive of great happiness is beyond 
question ; but then the feeling must be mutual, it 
must be reciprocated. One-sided love or benevolence 
is a virtue, which is as much as to say it is not a 
pleasure. The delights of benevolence are the de- 
lights of reciprocated benevolence ; until recipro- 
cated, in some form, the benevolent man has, strictly 
speaking, the sacrifice and nothing more. There is a 
great reluctance to encounter this simple naked truth ; 
to state it in theory, at least, for it is fully admitted in 
practice. We fence it off by the assumption that 
benevolence will always have its reward somehow ; 
that if the objects of it are ungrateful, others will 
make good the defect at last Now these qualifi- 
cations are very pertinent, very suitable to be 
urged after allowing the plain truth, that benevo- 
lence is intrinsically a sacrifice, a painful act ; and 
that this act is redeemed, and far more than re- 
deemed, by a fair reciprocity of benevolence. Only 
such an admission can keep us out of a mesh ot 
contradictions. Like justice in itself, Benevolence in 
itself is painful ; any virtue is pain in the first 



54 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

instance, although, when equally responded to, it 
brings a surplus of pleasure. There may be acts of a 
beneficent tendency that cost the performer nothing, 
or that even may chance to be agreeable ; but these 
examples must not be given as the rule, or the type. 
It is the essence of virtuous acts, the prevailing 
character of the class, to tax the agent, to deprive 
him of some satisfaction to himself ; this is what we 
must start from ; we are then in a position to explain 
how and when, and under what circumstances, and 
with what limitations, the virtuous man, whether his 
virtue be justice or benevolence, is from that cause a 
happy man. 

It is a fallacy of the suppressed relative to describe 
virtue as determined by the moral nature of God, as 
opposed to his arbitrary will. The essence of Mora- 
lity is obedience to a superior, to a Law ; where there 
is no superior there is nothing either moral or im- 
moral. The supreme power is incapable of an 
immoral act. Parliament may do what is injurious, 
it cannot do what is illegal. So the Deity may 
be beneficent or maleficent, he cannot be moral or 
immoral. 

Among the various ways, proposed in the seven- 
teenth century, of solving the difficulty of the mutual 
action of the heterogeneous agencies — matter and 
mind — one was a mode of Divine interference, called 
the "Theory of Occasional Causes". According to 
this view, the Deity exerted himself by a perpetual 



MYSTERY CORRELATES WITH THE INTELLIGIBLE. 55 

miracle to bring about the mental changes corres- 
ponding to the physical agents operating on our 
senses — light, sound, &c. Now in the mode of action 
suggested there is nothing self-contradictory ; but in 
the use of the word " miracle " there is a mistake of 
relativity. The meaning of a miracle is an excep- 
tional interference ; it supposes an habitual state of 
things, from which it is a deviation. The very idea 
of miracle is abolished if every act is to be alike 
miraculous. 

We shall devote the remainder of this exposition to 
a still more notable class of mistakes due to the sup- 
pression of a correlative member in a relative couple 
— those, namely, connected with the designation, 
"Mystery," a term greatly abused, in various ways, 
and especially by disregarding its relative character. 
Mystery supposes certain things that are plain, in- 
telligible, knowable, revealed ; and, by contrast to 
these, refers to certain other things that are obscure, 
unintelligible, unknowable, unrevealed. When a 
man's conduct is entirely plain, straightforward, or 
accounted for, we call that an intelligible case ; when 
we are perplexed by the tortuosities of a crafty, 
double-dealing person, we say it is all very mysterious. 
So, in nature, we consider that we understand certain 
phenomena : such as gravity, and all its conse- 
quences, in the fall of bodies, the flow of rivers, the 
motions of the planets, the tides. On the other hand, 
earthquakes and volcanoes are very mysterious ; we 
do not know what they depend upon, how or in 



56 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

what circumstances they are produced. Some of 
the operations of living bodies are understood, — 
as the heart's action in the mechanical propulsion 
of the blood ; others, and the greater number, are 
mysterious, as the whole process of germination 
and growth. Now the existence of the contrast 
between things plainly understood, and things not 
understood, gives one distinct meaning to the term 
Mystery. In some cases, a mystery is formed by an 
apparent contradiction, as in the Theological mystery 
of Freewill and Divine Foreknowledge ; here, too, 
there is a contrast with the great mass of consistent 
and reconcilable things. But now, when we are told 
by sensational writers, that everything is mysterious ; 
that the simplest phenomenon in nature — the fall of 
a stone, the swing of a pendulum, the continuance of a 
ball shot in the air — are wonderful, marvellous, mira- 
culous, our understanding is confounded; there being 
then nothing plain at all, there is nothing mysterious. 
The wonderful rises from the common ; as the lofty 
is lofty by relation to something lower : if there is 
nothing common, then there is nothing wonderful ; if 
all phenomena are mysterious, nothing is mysterious ; 
if we are to stand aghast in amazement because three 
times four is twelve, what phenomenon can we take 
as the type of the plain and the intelligible? You 
must always keep up a standard of the common, the 
easy, the comprehensible, if you are to regard other 
things as wonderful, difficult, inexplicable. 

The real character of a MYSTERY, and what consti- 
tutes the Explanation of a fact, have been greatly 



LOCKE ON THE LIMITS OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 57 

misconceived. The changes of view on these points 
make up a chapter in the history of the education of 
the human mind. Perhaps the most decisive turning 
point was the publication of Locke's " Essay con- 
cerning Human Understanding," the motive of which, 
as stated in the homely and forcible language of the 
preface, was to ascertain what our understandings can 
do, what subjects they are fit to deal with, and where 
they should stop. I quote a few sentences : — 

" If by this inquiry into the nature of the Under- 
standing, I can discover the powers thereof; how 
" far they reach ; to what things they are in any 
" degree proportionate ; and where they fail us : I 
" suppose it may be of use, to prevail with the busy 
" mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with 
" things exceeding its comprehension ; to stop when 
" it is at the utmost extent of its tether ; and to sit 
"down in a quiet ignorance of those things which, 
"upon examination, are proved to be beyond the 
"reach of our capacities." "The candle that is set 
" up in us, shines bright enough for all our purposes. 
"The discoveries we can make with this ought to 
" satisfy us. And we shall then use our Understand- 
ings aright, when we entertain all objects in that 
"way and proportion that they are suited to our 
" faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable 
"of being proposed to us." "It is of great use for 
" the sailor to know the length of his line, though he 
" cannot fathom with it all the depths of the ocean." 

The course of physical science was preparing the 

same salutary lesson. Locke's great contemporary 
4 



58 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

and friend, Isaac Newton, was his fellow-worker in 
this tutorial undertaking ; nor should Bacon be for- 
gotten, although there is dispute as to the extent and 
character of his influence. The combined operation 
of these great leaders of thought was apparent in the 
altered views of scientific inquirers as to what is com- 
petent in research — what is the proper aim of inquiry. 
There arose a disposition to abandon the pursuit of 
mysterious essences and grand pervading unities, and 
ascertain with precision the facts and the laws of 
natural phenomena. The study of astronomy was 
inaugurated in Greenwich Observatory. The experi- 
ments of Priestley and of Franklin farther exemplified 
the eighteenth-century key to the secrets of the 
universe. 

The lesson imparted by Newton and Locke and 
their successors still remains to be carried out and 
embodied in the subtler inquiries. The bearing upon 
what constitutes a Mystery, and what constitutes 
Explanation, or the accounting for appearances, may 
be expressed thus : — 

In the first place, the Understanding can never 
pass out of its own experience — its acquired know- 
ledge, whether of body or of mind. What we obtain 
by our various sensibilities to the world about us, and 
by our self-consciousness, are the foundation, the A 
B C of everything that we are capable of knowing. 
We know colours, and we know sound ; we know 
pleasure and pain, and the various emotions of won- 
der, fear, love, anger. If there be any being endowed 
with senses different from ours, with that being we 



TIME AND SPACE RELATIVE TO OUR FACULTIES. 59 

can have no communion. If there be any phenomena 
that escape our limited sensibilities, they transcend 
the possibility of our knowledge. 

It is necessary, however, to take account of the 
combining or constructive aptitudes of the mind. We 
can go a certain length in putting together our alpha- 
bet of sensation and experience into many various 
compounds. We can imagine a paradise or a pande- 
monium ; but only as made up of our own knowledge 
of things good and evil. The limits of this construc- 
tive power are soon reached. We are baffled to enter 
into the feelings of our own kindred, when they are 
far removed in character and circumstances from 
ourselves. The youth at twenty cannot approximate 
to the feelings of men of middle age. The healthy 
are unable to comprehend the life of the invalid. 

To come to the practical applications. The great 
leading notions called Time and Space are known to 
us only under the conditions of our own sensibility. 
Time is made known by all our actions, all our senses, 
all our feelings, and by the succession of our thoughts ; 
it is experienced as a continuance and a repetition of 
movement, sight, sound, fear, or any other state of 
feeling, or of thinking. One motion or sensation is 
continued longer than another ; or it is more fre- 
quently repeated after intermission, giving the nume- 
rical estimate of time, as in the beats of the pendulum. 
In these ways we form estimates of seconds, minutes, 
hours, days. And our constructive faculty can be 
brought into play to conceive the larger tracts of 
duration — a century, or a hundred centuries. Nay, 



60 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

by our arithmetical powers we can put down in cipher, 
or conceive symbolically (which is the meagrest of all 
conceptions) millions of millions of centuries ; these 
being after all but compounds of our alphabet of 
enduring or repeated sensations and thoughts. We 
can suppose this arithmetical process to operate upon 
past duration or upon future duration, and there is no 
limit to the numbers that we can write down. But there 
is one thing that we cannot do ; we cannot fix upon a 
point when Time or succession began, or upon a point 
when it will cease. That is an operation not in keep- 
ing with our faculties ; the very supposition is im- 
practicable. We cannot entertain the notion of a 
state of things wherein the fact of continuance had no 
place ; the effort belies itself. Time is inseparable 
from our mental nature ; whatever we imagine, we 
must imagine as enduring. Some philosophers have 
supposed that we must be endowed by nature with 
the conception of Time, before we begin to exercise 
our senses ; but the difficulty would be to deprive us 
of that adjunct without extinguishing our mental 
nature. Give us sensibility, and you cannot withhold 
the element of Time. The supposition of Kant and 
others, that it is implanted in us as an empty form, 
before we begin to employ our senses upon things, is 
needless ; for as soon as we move, see, hear, think, are 
pleased or pained, we create time. And our notion 
of Time in general is exactly what these sensibilities 
make it, only enlarged by our constructive power 
already spoken of. 

While all our senses and feelings give us time, it is 



MATTER AND VOID SUPPLEMENTARY. 6 1 

our experience of Motion and Resistance, — the ener- 
getic or active side of our nature alone, — that gives us 
Space. The simplest feature of Space is the alter- 
nation of Resistance and Non-Resistance, of obstruct- 
ed motion and freedom to move. The hand presses 
dead upon an obstacle ; the obstacle gives way and 
allows free motion ; these two contrasting experiences 
are the elements of the two contrasting facts — Matter 
and Space. By none of the five senses, in their pure 
and proper character as senses, can we obtain these 
experiences ; and hence at an earlier stage of inquiry 
into the mind, when our knowledge-giving sensi- 
bilities were referred to the five senses, there was no 
adequate account of the notion of Space or Extension. 
Space includes more than this simple contrast of the 
resisting and the non-resisting; it includes what we call 
the Co-existing or Contemporaneous, the great aggre- 
gate of the outspread world, as existing at any 
moment, a somewhat complicated attainment, which I 
am not now specially concerned with. It sufficiently 
illustrates the limitation of our knowledge by our 
sensibilities, from the nature of space, to fasten atten- 
tion on the double and mutually supplementing 
experience of Matter and Void ; the one resisting 
movement, and giving the consciousness of resistance, 
or dead strain, the other permitting movement, and 
giving the consciousness of the unobstructed sweep 
of the limbs or members. Whatever else may be in 
space, this freedom to move, to soar, to expatiate (in 
contrast to being hemmed in, obstructed, held fast), 
is an essential part of the conception, and is formed 



62 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

out of our active or moving sensibilities. Now, as- 
far as movement is concerned, we must be in one 
of two states : — we must be putting forth energy 
without effecting movement, being met by obstacles 
called matter ; or we must be putting forth energy 
unresisted and effecting movement, which is what we 
mean by empty space. There is no third position in 
the matter of putting forth our active energy. Where 
resistance ends and freedom begins, there is space ; 
where freedom ends, and obstruction begins, there is 
matter. We find our sentient life to be made up, as 
regards movement, of a certain number and range of 
these two alternations ; in other words, free spaces 
and resisting barriers. And we can, by the construc- 
tive power already mentioned, imagine other propor- 
tions of the two experiences ; we can imagine the 
scope for movement, the absence of obstruction, to 
be enlarged more and more, to be counted by 
thousands and millions of miles ; but the only 
terminus or boundary that we can imagine is 
resistance, a dead obstacle. We are able to conceive 
the starry spaces widened and prolonged from galaxy 
to galaxy through enormous strides of increasing 
amplitude, but when we try to think an end to this 
career, we can think only of a dead wall. There is no 
other end of space within the grasp of our faculties ; 
and that termination is not an end of extension ; for 
we know that solid matter, viewed in other ways than 
as obstructing movement, has the same property of 
the extended belonging to the empty void. The 
inference is, that the limitation of our means of 



ARE TIME AND SPACE INFINITE? 63 

knowledge renders altogether incompetent the ima- 
gination of an end to either Time or Space. The 
greatest efforts of our combining faculty cannot ex- 
ceed the elements presented to it, and these elements 
contain nothing that would set forth the situation of 
space ending, and obstruction not beginning. 

Under these circumstances, it is an irrevelant en- 
quiry, to ask, Are Time and Space finite or infinite ? 
Many philosophers have put the question, and even 
answered it They say Time has no beginning and 
no end, and Space has no boundaries ; or, as other- 
wise expressed, — Time and Space are Infinite : .an 
answer of such vagueness as to mean anything, from 
a harmless and proper assertion of the limits of our 
faculties, up to the verge of extravagance and self- 
contradiction. 

When, in fact, people talk of the Infinite in Time 
and Space, they can point to one intelligible signi- 
fication ; as to the rest, this word is not a subject for 
scientific propositions, and the attempt at such can 
lead only to contradictions. The Infinite is a phrase 
most various in its purport : it is for the most part an 
emotional word, expressing human desire and aspira- 
tion ; a word of poetry, imagination, and preaching, 
not a word to be discussed under science ; no intellec- 
tual definition would exhibit its emotional force. 

The second property of our intelligence is, that we 
can generalise many facts into one. Tracing agree- 
ment among the multifarious appearances of things, 
we can comprehend in one statement a vast number 
of details. The single law of gravity expresses the 



64 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

fall of a stone, the flow of rivers, the retention of the 
moon in her circuit round the earth. Now, this 
generalising sweep is a real advance in our knowledge, 
an ascent in the matter of intelligence, a step towards 
centralising the empire of science. What is more, 
this is the only real meaning of EXPLANATION. A 
difficulty is solved, a mystery unriddled, when it 
can be shown to resemble something else ; to be an 
example of a fact already known. Mystery is isola- 
tion, exception, or, it may be, apparent contradiction ; 
the resolution of the mystery is found in assimilation, 
identity, fraternity. When all things are assimilated, 
so far as assimilation can go, so far as likeness holds, 
there is an end to explanation ; there is an end to 
what the mind can do, or can intelligently desire. 

Thus, when Gravity was generalised, by assimilating 
the terrestrial attraction seen in falling bodies with the 
celestial attraction of the sun and planets ; and when, 
by fair presumption, the same power was extended to 
the remote stars ; when, also, the law was ascertained, 
so that the movements of the various bodies could be 
computed and predicted, there was nothing further to 
be done ; explanation was exhausted. Unless we can 
find some other force to fraternise with gravity, so 
that the two might become a still more comprehensive 
unity, we must rest in gravity as the ultimatum of our 
faculties. There is no conceivable modification, or 
substitute, that would better our position. Before 
Newton, it was a mystery what kept the moon and 
the planets in their places ; the assimilation with 
falling bodies was the solution. But, say many per- 



GRAVITY NOT A MYSTERY. 65 

sons, is not gravity itself a mystery ? We say No ; 
gravity has passed through all the stages of legitimate 
and possible explanation ; it is the most highly gene- 
ralised of all physical facts, and by no assignable 
transformation could it be made more intelligible than 
it is. It is singularly easy of comprehension ; its law 
is exactly known ; and, excepting the details of calcu- 
lation, in its more complex workings, there is nothing 
to complain of, nothing to rectify, nothing to pretend 
ignorance about ; it is the very pattern, the model, 
the consummation of knowledge. The path of 
science, as exhibited in modern times, is towards 
generality, wider and wider, until we reach the 
highest, the widest laws of every department of things; 
there explanation is finished, mystery ends, perfect 
vision is gained. 

What is always reckoned the mystery by pre-emin- 
ence is the union of Body and Mind. How, then, 
should we treat this Mystery according to the spirit 
of modern thought, according to the modern laws of 
explanation ? The course is to conceive the elements 
according to the only possible plan, our own sensi- 
bility or consciousness ; which gives us matter as one 
class of facts — extension, inertness, weight, and so 
on ; and mind as another class of facts — pleasures, 
pains, volitions, ideas. The difference between these 
two is total, diametrical, complete ; there is really 
nothing common to the experience of pleasure and 
the experience of a tree ; difference has here reached 
its acme; agreement is eliminated; there is no 



66 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES. 

higher genus to include these two in one; as the 
ultimate, the highest elements of knowledge, they 
admit of no fusion, no resolution, no unity. Our 
utmost flight of generality leaves us in possession of a 
double, a couple of absolutely heterogeneous elements. 
Matter cannot be resolved into mind; mind cannot 
be resolved into matter ; each has its own definition ; 
each negatives the other. 

This being the fact, we accept it, and acquiesce. 
There is surely nothing to be dissatisfied with, to 
complain of, in the circumstance that the elements of 
our experience are, in the last resort, two, and not 
one. If we had been provided with fifty ultimate 
experiences, none of them having a single property in 
common with any other; and if we had only our 
present limited intellects, we might be entitled to 
complain of the world's mysteriousness in the one 
proper acceptation of mystery — namely, as over- 
powering our means of comprehension, as loading us 
with unassimilable facts. As it is, matter, in its 
commoner aspects and properties, is perfectly intel- 
ligible ; in the great number and variety of its endow- 
ments or properties, it is revealed to us slowly and 
with much difficulty, and these subtle properties — 
the deep affinities and molecular arrangements — are 
the mysteries rightly so called. Mind in itself is also 
intelligible; a pleasure is as intelligible as would be 
any transmutation of it into the inscrutable essence 
that people often desiderate. It is one of the facts of 
our sensibility, and has a great many facts of its own 
kindred, which makes it all the more intelligible. 



UNION OF MIND AND BODY. 67 

The varieties of pleasure, pain, and emotion are very 
numerous ; and to know, remember, and classify 
them, is a work of labour, a legitimate mystery. The 
subtle links of thought are also very various, although 
probably all reducible to a small number ; and the 
ascertaining and following out of these has been a 
work of labour and time \ they have, therefore, been 
mysterious ; mystery and intellectual toil being the 
real correlatives. The complications of matter and the 
complications of mind are genuine mysteries; the 
reducing or simplifying of these complications, by the 
exertions of thinking men, is the way, and the only 
way out of the darkness into light. 

But what now of the mysterious union of the two 
great ultimate facts of human experience? What 
should the followers of Newton and Locke say to this 
crowning instance of deep and awful mystery? Only 
one answer can be given. Accept the union, and 
generalise it. Find out the fewest number of simple 
laws, such as will express all the phenomena of this 
conjoint life. Resolve into' the highest possible 
generalities the connections of pleasure and pain, 
with all the physical stimulants of the senses — food, 
tastes, odours, sounds, lights — with all the play of 
feature and of gesture, and all the resulting move- 
ments and bodily changes ; and when you have 
done that, you have so far truly, fully, finally ex- 
plained the union of body and mind. Extend your 
generalities to the course of the thoughts ; determine 
what physical changes accompany the memory, the 
reason, the imagination, and express those changes in 



68 ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES, 

the most general, comprehensive laws, and you have 
explained the how and the why brain causes thought, 
and thought works in brain. There is no other ex- 
planation needful, no other competent, no other that 
would be explanation. Instead of our being " unfor- 
tunate," as is sometimes said, in not being able to 
know the essence of either matter or mind — in not 
comprehending their union ; our misfortune would be 
to have to know anything different from what we do 
or may know. If there be still much mystery attach- 
ing to this linking of the two extreme facts of our 
experience, it is simply this : that we have made so 
little way in ascertaining what in one goes with what 
in the other. We know a good deal about the 
feelings and their alliances, some of which are open 
and palpable to all mankind ; and we have obtained 
some important generalities in these alliances. Of 
the connections of thought with physical changes we 
know very little : these connections, therefore, are 
truly and properly mysterious ; but they are not 
intrinsically or hopelessly so. The advancing study 
of the physical organs, on the one hand, and of the 
mental functions, on the other, may gradually abate 
this mystery. And if a day arrive when the links that 
unite our intellectual workings with the workings of 
the nervous system and the other bodily organs shall 
be fully ascertained and adequately generalised, no 
one thoroughly educated in the scientific spirit of the 
last two centuries will call the union of mind and body 
any longer inscrutable or mysterious. 



III. 

THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 



THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS* 

I. HISTORICAL SKETCH. 

Up to the year 1853, the appointing of Civil Servants 
lay wholly in the hands of patrons. In 1853, patron- 
age was severely condemned and competitive exami- 
nation officially recommended, for the first time, in a 
Report by Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles 
Trevelyan ; but, while the recommendation was taken 
up in the following year and immediately acted upon 
in the Indian Civil Service, it was not till very much 
later that it was fully adopted in the Home Service. 
The history, indeed, of this last is somewhat peculiar. 
After the Report already referred to, came an Order 
of Council, of date May 21, 1855, in which we find 
it " ordered that all such young men as may be pro- 
posed to be appointed to any junior situation in any 
department of the Civil Service shall, before they are 
admitted to probation, be examined by or under the 
Directors of the said Commissioners, and shall receive 
from them a Certificate of Qualification for such 
situation ". This order was rigorously carried out by 

* The Civil Service Examination Scheme, considered with reference (i) 
to Sciences, and (2) to Languages. A paper read before the Educational 
Section of the Social Science Association, at the meeting in Aberdeen, 
1877 : with additions relevant to Lord Salisbury's Scheme. 



72 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

the Commissioners, and, although its absolute require- 
ment was simply that the nominees should pass a 
certain examination, it, nevertheless, allowed the 
heads of departments to institute competition if they 
cared. Accordingly, we find that competition— #«£ 
limited — was immediately set on foot in several of the 
offices, and the result led to the following remark in 
the Report of 1856 :— 

" We do not think it within our province to discuss 
the expediency of adopting the principle of open 
competition as contra-distinguished from examina- 
tion , but we must remark that, both in the com- 
petitive examination for clerkships in our own and in 
other offices, those who have succeeded in attaining 
the appointments have appeared to us to possess 
considerably higher attainments than those who have 
come in upon simple nomination ; and, we may add, 
that we cannot doubt that if it be adopted as a usual 
course to nominate several candidates to compete for 
each vacancy, the expectation of this ordeal will act 
most beneficially on the education and industry of 
those young persons who are looking forward to 
public employment." 

In 1857, a near approach was made to open com- 
petition, in the case of four clerkships awarded by 
the competing examination in the Commissioners' 
own establishment. " The fact of the competition 
was not made public, but was communicated to one 
or two heads of schools and colleges, and mentioned 
casually to other persons at various times. The 
number of competitors who presented themselves was 



BEGINNING OF OPEN COMPETITION. 73 

forty-six, of which number, forty-f©ur were actually 
examined." 

It was reserved for 1858 to see the first absolutely 
open competition, in the case of eight writerships in 
the Office of the Secretary of State for India ; and in 
that year, too, a step in advance was made when the 
Commissioners in their Report " pointed out the ad- 
vantage which would result from enlarging the field 
of competition by substituting, for the plan of nomi- 
nating three persons only to compete for each vacant 
situation, the system of nominating a proportionate 
number of candidates to compete for several appoint- 
ments at one examination ". 

The year i860 sounded the death-knell of simple 
pass examination. It was then recommended by a 
Select Committee of the House of Commons, and the 
recommendation was adopted, that the competitive 
method, in its limited form, should be henceforth 
universally applied to Junior situations. This recom- 
mendation was at once acted upon in the case of 
clerkships under the control of the Lords Commis- 
sioners of the Treasury, and others by and by followed ; 
but, as matter of fact, it was never strictly carried out 
in all its scope and rigour; and as late as 1868 the 
Commissioners in their Report stated that " the num- 
ber of situations filled on the competitive method has 
been comparatively small ". Meanwhile, competitive 
examination was making way in other quarters. 

From 1857, the Commissioners had been in the 
habit of examining competitively, at the request of 
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, such candidates as 



74 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

might be nominated for cadetships in the Royal Irish 
Constabulary; and, in 1861, the Lords Commissioners 
of the Admiralty " threw open to public competition " 
appointments as apprentices in Her Majesty's dock- 
yards, and appointments as " engineer students " in the 
steam factories connected therewith. 

In 1870, the end so long aimed at was attained, 
and by an Order in Council of June 4, open com- 
petition was made the only door of entry to the 
general Civil Service. 

In entire contrast with this, as has been already 
said, was the action in the case of the Indian Civil 
Service. Here the principle of open competition was 
adopted from the first, and the examination took a 
very elevated start, comprising the highest branches 
of a learned education. These branches were duly 
specified in a Report drawn up in November, 1854, by a 
Committee, of which Lord Macaulay was chairman ; 
and, with the exception of Sanskrit and Arabic, they 
included simply (as might have been expected) the 
literary and scientific subjects ordinarily taught at the 
principal seats of general education in the Kingdom. 
These were : — 

English Language and Literature (Composition, 
History, and General Literature, — to each of which 
500 marks were assigned, making a total of 1,500) ; 
Greek and Latin (each with 750 marks) ; French, 
German, and Italian (valued at 375 marks, respec- 
tively) ; Mathematics, pure and mixed (marks 1,000); 
Natural and Moral Sciences (each 500) ; Sanscrit and 
Arabic (375 each). 



PRINCIPLE OF SELECTION OF SUBJECTS. 75 

The principle of selection here is clear and obvious. 
It did not rest upon any doctrine regarding the utility 
or value of subjects for mental training, but simply 
upon this, that those subjects already in the field 
must be accepted, and that (as Mr. Jowett, in his 
letter to Sir Charles Trevelyan, of January, 1854, put 
it) " it will not do to frame our examination on any 
mere theory of education. We must test a young 
man's ability by what he knows, not by what we wish 
him to know." Indeed, this is explicitly avowed in 
the Report by the author of the Scheme himself. 
The Natural Sciences are included, because (it is 
confessed) " of late years they have been introduced 
as a part of general education into several of our 
universities and colleges": and, as for the Moral 
Sciences, " those Sciences are, it is well known, much 
studied both at Oxford and at the Scottish Uni- 
versities ". 

Into the details of Macaulay's interesting Report, 
I need not here enter. Room, however, must be 
found for one quotation. It deals with the distribu- 
tion of marks, and is both characteristic and puts 
the matter in small compass. "It will be necessary," 
says the writer, "that a certain number of marks 
should be assigned to each subject, and that the place 
of a candidate should be determined by the sum total 
of the marks which he has gained. The marks ought, 
we conceive, to be distributed among the subjects of 
examination in such a manner that no part of the 
kingdom, and no class of schools, shall exclusively 
furnish servants to the East India Company. It 



76 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

would be grossly unjust, for example, to the great 
academical institutions of England, not to allow skill 
in Greek and Latin versification to have a consider- 
able share in determining the issue of the competition. 
Skill in Greek and Latin versification has, indeed, no 
direct tendency to form a judge, a financier, or a 
diplomatist. But the youth who does best what all the 
ablest and most ambitious youths about him are trying 
to do well will generally prove a superior man ; nor can 
we doubt that an accomplishment by which Fox and 
Canning, Grenville and Wellesley, Mansfield and 
Tenterden first distinguished themselves above their 
fellows, indicates powers of mind, which, properly 
trained and directed, may do great service to the 
State. On the other hand, we must remember that 
in the north of this island the art of metrical composi- 
tion in the ancient languages is very little cultivated) 
and that men so eminent as Dugald Stewart, Horner, 
Jeffrey, and Mackintosh, would probably have been 
quite unable to write a good copy of Latin alcaics, or 
to translate ten lines of Shakspeare into Greek 
iambics. We wish to see such a system of examina- 
tion established as shall not exclude from the service 
of the East India Company either a Mackintosh or a 
Tenterden, either a Canning or a Horner." 

Now, reverting to Macaulay's Table of Subjects as 
above exhibited, I may observe that, till quite recently, 
no very serious alterations were ever made upon it. 
The scale of marks, indeed, was altered more than 
once, and sometimes Sanskrit and Arabic were struck 
off, and Jurisprudence and Political Economy put in 



ORIGINAL SCHEME FOR THE INDIA SERVICE. 77 

their stead ; but, if we except the exclusion of Political 
Philosophy in 1858, at the desire of the present Lord 
Derby, from the Moral Science branch, the list re- 
mained, till Lord Salisbury's late innovation, to all 
intents and purposes what it was at the beginning. 
Here, for instance, is the prescription for 1875 : — 

English Composition 500 

History of England, including that of the laws 

and constitution 500 

English Language and Literature . . . 500 

Language, literature, and history of Greece . 750 

„ „ „ „ Rome . 750 

France . 375 

„ „ „ „ Germany 375 

Italy . 375 

Mathematics, pure and .mixed . . . 1,250 
Natural Sciences, that is, (1) chemistry, includ- 
ing heat; (2) electricity and magnetism; (3) 
geology and mineralogy ; (4) zoology ; (5) 

botany . 1,000 

%* The total (1,000) marks may be obtained by 
adequate proficiency in any two or more of the five 
branches of science included under this head. 

Moral Sciences, that is, logic, mental and 

moral philosophy 500 

Sanskrit, language and literature . . . 500 

Arabic, language and literature . . . 500 

But Lord Salisbury's changes have been great and 
sweeping. They are probably in keeping with the 
restriction of the competitor's age to "over 17 under 



78 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

19 " ; but, if so, they serve only to shew all the more 
conclusively that the restriction is a mistake. A 
scheme that distributes marks on anything but a 
rational and intelligent system ; a scheme that ex- 
cludes the Natural History Sciences, Mineralogy 
and Geology, as well as Psychology and Moral 
Philosophy from its scope altogether ; a scheme that 
prescribes only Elements and Outlines of such import- 
ant subjects as Natural Science (Chemistry, Electri- 
city and Magnetism, &c.) and Political Economy — 
stands self-condemned. But, to do it justice, let us 
produce the Table in extenso : — 

MARKS. 

English Composition . . . . . 300 
History of England, including a period selected 

by the candidate . . . . . . 300 

English Literature, including looks selected by 

the candidate . ... 300 

Greek . . . . . . . . 600 

Latin 800 

French 500 

German . . 500 

Italian ...... . 400 

Mathematics, pure and mixed . . . 1,000 
Natural Science, that is, the Elements of any 

two of the following Sciences viz. : — 
Chemistry, 500 ; Electricity and Magnetism, 

300; Experimental Laws of Heat and Light, 

300 ; Mechanical Philosophy, with Outlines 

of Astronomy, 300. 
Logic 300 



AMENDED SCHEMES. 



79 



Elements of Political Economy . . . 300 

Sanskrit 500 

Arabic 5°o 

Further remarks are reserved for the sequel. Mean- 
while, I give the scheme advocated by myself in the 
present Essay : — 

GENERAL SCIENCES :— 

Mathematics 5°° 

Natural Philosophy . . . . . 500 

Chemistry 500 

Biology, as physiology 500 

Mental Science 500 

SPECIAL OR CONCRETE SCIENCES: — 

Mineralogy ^ 

Botany . . . . . . . f each 250 

Zoology . . . . . . . [ or 300 

Geology ) 

As a substitute for language, literature, and philo- 
sophy of Greece, Rome, France, Germany, and Italy: — 
Greece — Institutions and History . , , 500 



„ Literature .... 


250 


Rome — Institutions and History . 


500 


„ Literature 


250 


France — Literature .... 


250 


Germany „ .... 


250 


Italy „ .... 


250 


Modern History 


1,000 



II. THE SCHEME CONSIDERED. 
The system of competitive examinations for the 



8o THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

public service, of which I have laid before the Section 
a brief history compiled from the Reports, is one of 
those radical innovations that may ultimately lead to 
great consequences. For the present, however, it 
leads to many debates. Not merely does the working 
out of the scheme involve conflicting views, but there 
is still, in many quarters, great hesitation as to whether 
the innovation is to be productive of good or of evil. 
The Report of the Playfair Commission, and the 
more recent Report relative to the changes in the 
India Civil Service Regulations, indicate pretty 
broadly the doubts that still cleave to many minds 
on the whole question. It is enough to refer to the 
views of Sir Arthur Helps, W. R. Greg, and Dr, 
Farr, expressed to the Playfair Commission, as 
decidedly adverse to the competitive system. The 
authorities cited in the Report on the India Examina- 
tions scarcely go the length of total condemnation ; 
but many acquiesce only because there is no hope 
of a reversal. 

The question of the expediency of the system as a 
whole is not well suited to a sectional discussion. 
We shall be much better employed in adverting to 
some of those details in the conduct of the examina- 
tions that have a bearing on the general education 
of the country, as well as on the Civil Service itself. 
It was very well for the Commissioners, at first 
starting, to be guided, in their choice of subjects and 
in their assigning of values to those subjects, by the 
received branches of education in the schools and 
colleges. But, sooner or later, these subjects must 



commissioners' scheme of science. 8 1 

be discussed on their intrinsic merits for the ends in 
view. Indeed, the scheme of Lord Salisbury has 
already made the venture that Macaulay declined 
to make ; it has absolutely excluded some of the 
best recognised subjects of our school and college 
teaching, instead of leaving them to the option of the 
candidates. 

I will occupy the present paper with the considera- 
tion of two departments in the examination pro- 
gramme — the one relating to the Physical or 
Natural Sciences, the other relating to Langu- 
ages. 

The Commissioners' scheme of Mathematics and 
Natural Science is not, in my opinion, accordant 
either with the best views of the relations of the 
sciences, or with the best teaching usages. 

In the classification of the Sciences, the first and 
most important distinction is between the funda- 
mental sciences, sometimes called the Abstract 
sciences, and the derivative or Concrete branches. 
My purpose does not require any nice clearing of 
the meanings of those technical terms. It is sufficient 
to say that the fundamental sciences are those that 
embrace distinct departments of the natural forces or 
phenomena ; and the derivative or concrete depart- 
ments assume all the laws laid down in the others, 
and apply them in certain spheres of natural objects. 
For example, Chemistry is a primary, fundamental, 
or abstract science ; and Mineralogy is a derivative 
and concrete science. In Chemistry the stress lies in 



82 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

explaining a peculiar kind of force, called chemical 
force ; in Mineralogy the stress is laid on the descrip- 
tion and classification of a select group of natural 
objects. 

The fundamental, or departmental sciences, as most 
commonly accepted, are these : — I. Mathematics ; 2. 
Natural Philosophy, or Physics ; 3. Chemistry ; 4. 
Biology ; 5. Psychology. They may be, therefore, 
expressed as Formal, Inanimate, Animate, and Men- 
tal. In these sciences, the idea is to view exhaustively 
some department of natural phenomena, and to 
assume the order best suited for the elucidation of 
the phenomena. Mathematics, the Formal Science, 
exhausts the relations of Quantity and Number ; 
measure being a universal property of things. Natu- 
ral Philosophy, in its two divisions (molar and mole- 
cular), deals with one kind of force ; Chemistry with 
another : and the two together conspire to exhaust 
the phenomena of inanimate nature ; being indispen- 
sably aided by the laws and formulae of quantity, as 
given in Mathematics. Biology turns over a new 
leaf; it takes up the phenom no — Life, or the ani- 
mated world. Finally, Psychology makes another 
stride, and embraces the sphere of mind. 

Now, there is no fact or phenomenon of the world 
that is not comprised under the doctrines expounded 
in some one or other of these sciences. We may 
have fifty "ologies" besides, but they will merely 
repeat for special ends, or in special connections, 
the principles already comprised in these five funda- 
mental subjects. The regular, systematic, exhaustive 



ORDER OF THE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES. 83 

account of the laws of nature is to be found within 
their compass. 

Again, these sciences have a fixed order or sequence, 
the order of dependence. Mathematics precedes them 
all, as being not dependent upon any, while all are 
more or less dependent upon it. The physical forces 
have to be viewed prior to the chemical ; and both 
physical and chemical forces are preparatory to vital. 
So there are reasons for placing Mental Science last 
of all. Hence a student cannot comprehend chem- 
istry without natural philosophy, nor biology without 
both. You cannot stand a thorough examination in 
chemistry without indirectly showing your knowledge 
of physics ; and a testing examination in biology 
would guarantee, with some slight qualifications, both 
physics and chemistry. 

Let us now turn to the other sciences — those that 
are not fundamental, but derivative. The chief 
examples are the three commonly called Natural 
History sciences — Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology. In 
these sciences no law or principle is at work that has 
not been already brought forward in the primary 
sciences. The properties of a Mineral are mathe- 
matical, physical, and chemical : the testing of mine- 
rals is by measurement, by physical tests, by chemical 
tests. The aim of this science is not to teach forces 
unknown to the student of physics and chemistry ; 
it is to embrace, under the best classification, all the 
bodies called minerals, and to describe the species in 
detail under mathematical, physical, and chemical 
characters. It is the first in order of the classificatory 



84 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

sciences. Its purpose in the economy of education 
is distinct and peculiar ; it imparts knowledge, not 
respecting laws, forces, or principles of operating, 
but respecting the concrete constituents of the world. 
It gives us a commanding view of one whole depart- 
ment of the material universe ; supplying information 
useful in practice, and interesting to the feelings. It 
also brings into exercise the great logical process, 
wanted on many occasions, the process of CLASSI- 
FICATION. 

So much for an instance from the Inorganic world, 
as showing the distinction between the two kinds of 
sciences. Another example may be cited from the 
field of Biology ; it is a little more perplexing. For 
" biology " is sometimes given as the name for the two 
concrete classificatory sciences — botany and zoology. 
In point of fact, however, there is a science that 
precedes those two branches, although blending with 
them ; the science commonly expressed by the older 
term, ' Physiology,' which is not a classificatory and a 
dependent science, but a mother science, like chem- 
istry. It expounds the peculiarities of living bodies, 
as such, and the laws of living processes — such pro- 
cesses as assimilation, nutrition, respiration, inner- 
vation, reproduction, and so on. One division is 
Vegetable Physiology, which is generally fused with 
the classificatory science of botany. Animal Phy- 
siology is allied with zoology, but more commonly 
stands alone. Lastly, the Physiology of the Human 
animal has been from time immemorial a distinct 
branch of knowledge, and is, of course, the chief of 






CLASSIFICATORY SCIENCES. 85 

them all. Man being the most complicated of all 
organised beings, not only are the laws of his vitality 
the most numerous, and the most practically interest- 
ing, but they go far to include all that is to be said 
of the workings of animal life in general. Thus, then, 
the mother science of Biology, as a general or funda- 
mental science, comprises Vegetable, Animal, and 
Human physiology. The classifkatory adjunct 
sciences are Botany and Zoology. It is in the 
various aspects of the mother science that we look 
for the account of all vital phenomena, and all practi- 
cal applications to the preservation of life. Even if 
we stop at these, we shall have a full command of the 
laws of the animate world. But we may go farther, 
and embrace the sciences that arrange, classify, and 
describe the innumerable host of living beings. 
These have their own independent interest and 
value, but they are not the sciences that of them- 
selves teach us the living processes. 

Thus, then, a proper scheme of scientific instruction 
starts from the essential, fundamental, and law-giving 
sciences — Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, 
and Mind. It then proceeds to the adjunct branches 
— such as Mineralogy, Botany, Zoology : and I might 
add others, as Geology, Meteorology, Geography, no 
one of which is primary ; for they all repeat in new 
connections, and for special purposes, the laws sys- 
tematically set forth in the primary sciences. 

In the foregoing remarks, I do not advance any 
new or debatable views. I believe the scientific 
world to be substantially in accord upon all that I 



86 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

have here stated ; any differences that there are in 
the manner of expressing the points do not affect 
my present purpose — namely, to discuss the scheme 
of the mathematical and physical sciences as set forth 
in the Civil Service Examinations. 

Under Mathematics (pure and mixed) the Com- 
missioners (in their Scheme of 1875), include mathe- 
matics, properly so called, and those departments of 
natural philosophy that are mathematically handled — 
statics, dynamics, and optics. But the next branch, 
entitled "Natural Science," is what I am chiefly to re- 
mark upon. Under it there is a fivefold enumeration : 
— (1) Chemistry, including Heat; (2) Electricity and 
Magnetism ; (3) Geology and Mineralogy ; (4) Zoo- 
logy ; (5) Botany. I cannot pretend to say where 
the Commissioners obtained this arrangement of 
natural knowledge. It is not supported by any 
authority that I am acquainted with. If the scheme 
just set forth is the correct one, it has three defects. 
First, it does not embrace in one group the remaining 
parts of natural philosophy, the experimental branches 
which, with the mathematical treatment, complete the 
department ; one of these, Heat, is attached to chem- 
istry, to which undoubtedly it has important relations, 
but not such as to withdraw it from physics and 
embody it in chemistry. Then, again, the physical 
branches, Electricity and Magnetism, are coupled in 
a department and made of co-equal value with 
chemistry together with heat I need not say that 
the united couple — electricity and magnetism — -is in 
point of extent of study not a half or a third of what 






BAD GROUPINGS OF SCIENCES. 87 

is included in the other coupling. Lastly, the 
three remaining members of the enumeration are 
three natural history sciences ; geology being coupled 
with mineralogy — which is a secondary consideration. 
Now I think it is quite right that these three sciences 
should have a place in the competition. What is 
objectionable is, that Biology is represented solely by 
its two classificatory components or adjuncts, botany 
and zoology ; there is no mother science of Physio- 
logy: and consequently the knowledge of the vast 
region of the Laws of Life goes for nothing. Nor 
can it be said that physiology is given with the 
others. The subject of vegetable physiology could 
easily enough be taken with Botany : I would 
not make a quarrel upon this part. It is zoology 
and animal physiology that cannot be so coupled. 
If we look to the questions actually set under 
zoology, we shall see that there is no pretence to 
take in physiology. I contend, therefore, that there 
is a radical omission in the scheme of natural 
science ; an omission that seems without any justi- 
fication. I am not here to sing the praises of Phy- 
siology : its place is fixed and determined by the 
concurrence of all competent judges : I merely point 
out that Zoology does not include it, but presupposes 
it. 

The Science scheme of the London University, to 
which the first Civil Service Commissioners, Sir 
Edward Ryan and Sir John Lefevre, were parties, is 
very nearly what I contend for. It gives the order — 
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Biology, 



88 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

Mental Science (including Logic). In the working of 
that scheme, however, Biology is made to comprehend 
both the mother science, Physiology, and the two 
classificatory sciences, Botany and Zoology. Of 
course the presence of two such enormous adjuncts 
cramps and confines the purely physiological exami- 
nation, which in my opinion should have full justice 
done to it in the first instance : still, the physiology is 
not suppressed nor reduced to a mere formality. 
Now, in any science scheme, I would provide for the 
general sciences first, and take the others, so far as 
expedient, in a new grouping, where those of a kind 
shall appear together, and stand in their proper 
character*, not as law-giving, but as arranging and 
describing sciences. There is no more reason for 
coupling Zoology with Physiology, than for tacking 
on Mineralogy to Chemistry. In point of outward 
form, Mineralogy and Zoology are kindred subjects. 

When the subjects are placed in the order that I 
have suggested, there is an end of that promiscuous 
and random choosing that the arrangement of the 
Commissioners suggests and encourages. To the 
specification of the five heads of natural science, it is 
added, that the whole of the 1,000 marks may be 
gained by high eminence in any two ; as if the choice 
were a matter of indifference. Now, I cannot think 
that this suggestion is in conformity with a just view 
of the continuity of science. When the sciences are 
rightly arranged, there is but one order in the mother 
sciences • if we are to choose a single science, it must 
be (with some qualifications) the first ; if two, the 



SUGGESTED SCIENCE GROUPINGS. 89 

first and second, and so on. To choose one of the 
higher sciences, Chemistry or Physiology, without the 
others that precede, is irrational. Indeed, it would 
scarcely ever be done, and for this reason. A man 
cannot have mastered Physiology without having 
gone through Physics and Chemistry ; and, although 
it is not necessary that he should retain a hold of 
everything in these previous sciences, yet he is sure to 
have done enough in both one and the other to make 
it worth his while to take these up in the examina- 
tion. So a good chemist must have so much familiar- 
ity with Physics, as to make it bad economy on his 
part not to give in Physics as well. The only case 
where an earlier science might be dropped is Mathe- 
matics ; for although that finds its application exten- 
sively in Physics and indirectly in Chemistry, yet there 
is a very large body of physical and chemical doctrine 
that is not dependent upon any of the more difficult 
branches, so that these may admit of being partially 
neglected. But, as an examination in Physics ought 
to include (as in the London University) all the mathe- 
matical applications, short of the higher calculus, it is 
not likely that Mathematics would be often dropped. 
So that, as regards the mother sciences, the variation 
of choice would be reduced to the different lengths 
that the candidate would go in the order as laid down. 
As regards the other sciences — those of classification 
and description — the selection might certainly be 
arbitrary to this extent, that Mineralogy, Botany, and 
Zoology might each be prescribed alone. But then, 
whoever presented one of these would also present 



90 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

the related mother science. He that took up Minera- 
logy, would infallibly also take up the three first as 
far as Chemistry. He that gave in Botany would 
probably take up Physiology, although not so neces- 
sarily, because the area of plant Physiology is very 
limited, and has little bearing on descriptive Botany, 
so that anything like a familiarity with Physiology 
might be evaded. But he that took up Zoology, would 
to a certainty take up Physiology; and very probably 
also the antecedent members of the fundamental 
group. As to Geology, it is usually coupled with 
Mineralogy, although involving also a slight know- 
ledge of Botany and Zoology. A competent minera- 
logist would be pretty sure to add Geology to his 
professional subjects. 

Before considering the re-arrangement of marks 
entailed by the proposed distribution of the sciences, 
I must advert to the position of Mathematics in the 
Commissioners' scheme. This position was first 
assigned in the original draft of 1854, and on the 
motives therein set forth with such ostentatious 
candour ; namely, the wish to reward the existing 
subjects of teaching, whatever they might be. Now, 
I contend that it is wholly beside the ends either of 
the Indian Civil Service, or of the Home Service, with 
known exceptions, to stimulate the very high mathe- 
matical knowledge that has hitherto entered into the 
examination scheme. A certain amount of Mathe- 
matics, the amount required in a pass examination in 
the London University, is essential as a basis of 
rational culture ; but, for a good general education, 



PROPER SCIENCE VALUES. 9 1 

all beyond that is misdirected energy. After receiving 
the modicum required, the student should pass on to 
the other sciences, and employ his strength in adding 
Experimental Physics and Chemistry to his stock. 
Whether a candidate succeeds or fails in the competi- 
tions, this is his best policy. 

Without arguing the point farther, I will now come 
to the amended scheme of science markings. It 
would be over-refining, and would not bring convic- 
tion to the general public, to make out a case for 
inequality in the five fundamental branches. It may 
be said that Physiology is of more value than Che- 
mistry, because it is farther on, and takes Chemistry 
with it ; the answer is, let the Physiology candidate go 
in and take marks in Chemistry also, which he is sure 
to do. I have purposely avoided all discussion about 
Mental Science ; I merely assume it as a branch co- 
ordinate with the prior sciences placed before it in the 
general list. I would then simply, in conclusion, give 
the primary sciences, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, 
Chemistry, Biology (as explained), Mental Philosophy, 
each 500 marks. The other sciences, Mineralogy, 
Botany, Zoology, Geology, I would make equal as 
between themselves, but somewhat lower than the 
primaries. The reasons are already apparent : the 
candidate for them would always have some of the 
others to present ; and their importance is, on the 
whole, less than the importance of the law-giving 
sciences. I should conceive that 250 or 300 marks 
apiece would be a proper amount of consideration 
shewn towards them. With that figure, I believe 



92 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

many science students could take up one or other in 
addition to the general sciences. 

The other topic that I am to bring forward is one 
of very serious import. It concerns the Civil Service 
competitions only as a part of our whole scheme of 
Education. I mean the position of LANGUAGES 
in our examinations. While the vast field of Natural 
Science is comprised in one heading, with a total of 
1,000 marks (raised finally to 1,400), our Civil Service 
scheme presents a row of five languages besides our 
own — two ancient, and three modern — with an aggre- 
gate value of 2,625 marks, or 2,800, as finally adjusted. 
The India scheme has, in addition, Sanskrit and 
Arabic, at 500 marks each ; the reasons for this pre- 
scription being, however, not the same as for the 
foregoing. 

The place of Language in education is not confined 
to the question as between the ancient and the modern 
languages. There is a wider enquiry as to the place 
of languages as a whole. In pursuing this enquiry, 
we may begin with certain things that are obvious 
and incontestable. 

In the first place, it is apparent that if a man is 
sent to hold intercourse with the people of a foreign 
nation, he must be able to understand and to speak 
the language of that nation. Our India civil servants 
are on that ground required to master the Hindoo 
spoken dialects. 

In the next place, if a certain range of information 
that you find indispensable is locked up in a foreign 



PLACE OF LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION. 93 

language, you are obliged to learn the language. If, 
in course of time, all this information is transferred to 
our native tongue, the necessity apparently ceases. 
These two extreme suppositions will be allowed at 
once. There may, however, be an indefinite number 
of intermediate stages. The information may be 
partially translated ; and it will then be a question 
whether the trouble of learning the language should 
be incurred for the sake of the untranslated part. Or. 
it may be wholly translated : but, conscious of the 
necessary defects even of good translations, if the 
subject-matter be supremely important, some people 
will think it worth while to learn the language in 
order to obtain the knowledge in its greatest purity 
and precision. This is a situation that admits of no 
certain rule. Our clergy are expected to know the 
original languages of the Bible, notwithstanding the 
abundance of translations ; many of which must be 
far superior in worth and authority to the judgment 
of a merely ordinary proficient in Hebrew and in 
Greek. 

It is now generally conceded that the classical 
languages are no longer the exclusive depository of 
any kind of valuable information, as they were two or 
three centuries ago. Yet they are still continued in 
the schools as if they possessed their original function 
unabated. We do not speak in them, nor listen to 
them spoken, nor write in them, nor read in them, for 
obtaining information. Why then are they kept up ? 
Many reasons are given, as we know. There is an 
endeavour to show that even in their original function, 



94 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

they are not quite effete. Certain professions are said 
to rely upon them for some points of information not 
fully communicated by the medium of English. Such 
is the rather indirect example of the clergy with Greek. 
So, it is said that Law is not thoroughly understood 
without Latin, because the great source of law, the 
Roman code, is written in Latin, and is in many 
points untranslatable. Further, it is contended that 
Greek philosophy cannot be fully mastered without a 
knowledge of the language of Plato and Aristotle. But 
an argument that is reduced to these examples must be 
near its vanishing point. Not one of the cases stands 
a rigorous scrutiny ; and they are not relied upon as 
the main justification of the continuance of classics 
A new line of defence is opened up which was not at 
all present to the minds of sixteenth century scholars. 
We are told of numerous indirect and secondary 
advantages of cultivating language in general and the 
classic languages in particular, which make the acqui- 
sition a rewarding labour, even without one particle 
of the primary use. But for these secondary advan- 
tages, languages could have no claim to appear, with 
such enormous values, in the Civil Service scheme. 

My purpose requires me to advert in these alleged 
secondary uses of language, not, however, for the view 
of counter-arguing them, but rather in order to indicate 
what seems to me the true mode of bringing them to 
the proof. 

The most usual phraseology for describing the in- 
direct benefit of languages is, that they supply a 
training to the powers ©t the mind ; that, if not infor- 



LANGUAGE MAY HAVE SECONDARY USES. 95 

mation, they are culture ; that they re-act upon our 
mastery of our own language, and so on. It is quite 
necessary, however, to find phrases more definite and 
tangible than the slippery words " culture " and " train- 
ing" : we must know precisely what particular powers 
or aptitudes are increased by the study of a foreign 
language. Nevertheless, the conclusions set forth in 
this paper do not require me to work out an exhaus- 
tive review of these advantages. It is enough to give 
as many as will serve for examples. 

Now, it must be freely admitted as a possible case, 
that a practice introduced in the first instance for a 
particular purpose, may be found applicable to many 
other purposes ; so much so, that, ceasing to be em- 
ployed for the original use, the practice may be kept 
up for the sake of the after uses. For example, 
clothing was no doubt primarily contrived for 
warmth ; but it is not now confined to that : 
decoration or ornament, distinction of sexes, ranks 
and offices, modesty — are also attained by means of 
clothes. This example is a suggestive one. We have 
only to suppose ourselves migrating to some African 
climate, where clothing for warmth is absolutely dis- 
pensed with. We should not on that account adopt 
literal nudity — we should still desire to maintain 
those other advantages. The artistic decoration of 
the person would continue to be thought of ; and, as 
no amount of painting and tattooing, with strings of 
beads superadded, would answer to our ideal of per- 
sonal elegance, we should have recourse to some light 
filmy textures, such as would allow the varieties of 



96 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

drapery, colours, and design, and show off the poetry 
of motion ; we should also indicate the personal dif- 
ferences that we were accustomed to show by vesture. 
But now comes the point of the moral ; we should not 
maintain our close heavy fabrics, our great-coats, 
shawls and cloaks. These would cease with the need 
for them. Perhaps the first emigrants would keep up 
the prejudice for their warm things, but not so their 
successors. 

Well, then, suppose the extreme case of a foreign 
language that is entirely and avowedly superseded as 
regards communication and interpretation of thoughts, 
but still furnishing so many valuable aids to mental 
improvement, thai we keep it up for the sake of these. 
As we are not to hear, speak, or read the language, 
we do not need absolutely to know the meaning of 
every word : we may, perhaps, dispense with much of 
the technicality of its grammar. The vocables and 
the grammar would be kept up exactly so far as to 
serve the other purposes, and no farther. The teacher 
would have in view the secondaiy uses alone. Sup- 
posing the language related to our own by derivation 
of words, and that this was what we put stress upon ; 
then the derivation would always be uppermost in the 
teacher's thoughts. If it were to illustrate Universal 
Grammar and Philology, this would be brought out 
to the neglect of translation. 

I have made an imaginary supposition to prepare 
the way for the real case. The classical or language 
teacher, is assumed to be fully conscious of the fact 
that the primary use of the languages is as good as 



CLASSICAL TEACHERS IDEAL. 97 

defunct ; and that he is continued in office because of 
certain clearly assigned secondary uses, but for which 
he would be superseded entirely. Some of the secon- 
dary uses present to his mind, at all events one of 
those that are put forward in argument, is that a 
foreign language, and especially Latin, conduces to 
good composition in our own language. And as we 
do compose in our own language, and never compose 
in Latin, the teacher is bound to think mainly of the 
English part of the task — to see that the pupils suc- 
ceed in the English translation, whether they succeed 
in the other o»- not. They may be left in a state of 
considerable ignorance of good Latin forms (ignor- 
ance will never expose them) ; but any defects in their 
English expression will be sure to be disclosed. 
Again, it is said that Universal Grammar or Philology 
is taught upon the basis of a foreign language. Is 
this object, in point of fact, present to the mind of 
every teacher, and brought forward, even to the sacri- 
fice of the power of reading and writing, which, by 
the supposition, is never to be wanted ? Further, the 
Latin Grammar is said to be a logical discipline. Is 
this, too, kept in view as a predominating end? Once 
more, it is declared that, through the classics, we attain 
the highest cultivation of Taste, by seeing models of 
unparalleled literary form. Be it so: is this habitually 
attended to in the teaching of these languages ? 

I believe I am safe in saying that, whilst these 
various secondary advantages are put forward in the 
polemic as to the value of languages, the teaching 
practice is by no means in harmony therewith. 



98 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

Even when in word the supporters of classics put 
forward the secondary uses, in deed they belie them- 
selves. Excellence in teaching is held by them to 
consist, in the first instance, in the power of accurate 
interpretation, — as if that obsolete use were still the 
use. If a teacher does this well, he is reckoned a 
good teacher, although he does little or nothing for 
the other ends, which in argument are treated as the 
reason of his existence. Indeed, this is the kind of 
teaching that is alone to be expected from the 
ordinary teacher ; all the other ends are more 
difficult than simple word teaching. Even when 
English Composition, Logic and Taste are taught in 
the most direct way, they are more abstruse than 
the simple teaching of a foreign language for pur- 
poses of interpretation ; but when tacked on as acces- 
sories to instruction in a language, they are still more 
troublesome to impart. A teacher of rare excellence 
may help his pupils in English style, in philology, in 
logic, and in taste ; but the mass of teachers can do 
very little in any of those directions. They are never 
found fault with merely because their teaching does 
not rise to the height of the great arguments that 
justify their vocation ; they would be found fault 
with, if their pupils were supposed to have made 
little way in that first function of language which is 
never to be called into exercise. 

I do not rest satisfied with quoting the palpable in- 
consistency between the practice of the teacher and 
the polemic of the defender of languages. I believe, 
further, that it is not expedient to carry on so many 



SECONDARY ENDS OF LANGUAGE NOT PRESSED. 99 

different acquisitions together. If you want to teach 
thorough English, you need to arrange a course of 
English, allot a definite time to it, and follow it with 
undivided attention during that time. If you wish 
to teach Philology you must provide a systematic 
scheme, or else a text-book of Philology, and bring 
together all the most select illustrations from langu- 
ages generally. So for Logic and for Taste. These 
subjects are far too serious to be imparted in passing 
allusions while the pupil is engaged in struggling 
with linguistic difficulties. They need a place in the 
programme to themselves ; and, when so provided 
for, the small dropping contributions of the language 
teacher may easily be dispensed with. 

The argument for Languages may, no doubt, take 
a bolder flight, and go so far as to maintain that the 
teacher does not need to turn aside from his plain 
path to secure these secondary ends — now the only 
valuable ends. The contention may be that in the 
close and rigorous attention to mere interpretation, 
just as if interpretation were still the living use, these 
other purposes are inevitably secured — good English, 
universal grammar, logic, taste, &c. I think, how- 
ever, that this is too far from the fact to be very con- 
fidently maintained. Of course, were it correct, the 
teacher should never have departed from it, as the 
best teachers continually do, and glory in doing. 

On the face of the thing, it must seem an unwork- 
able position to surrender the value of a language, 
as a language, and keep it up for something else. 
The teaching must always be guided by the original, 



IOO THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

although defunct, use ; this is the natural, the easy, 
course to follow ; for the mass of teachers at all times 
it is the broad way. Whatever the necessities of 
argument may drive a man to say, yet in his teaching 
he cannot help postulating to himself, as an indis- 
pensable fiction, that his pupils are some day or other 
to hear, to read, to speak, or to write the language. 

The intense conservatism in the matter of Lan- 
guages — the alacrity to prescribe languages on all 
sides, without inquiring whether they are likely to be 
turned to account — may be referred to various causes. 
For one thing — although the remark may seem un- 
gracious and invidious — many minds, not always of 
the highest force, are absorbed and intoxicated by 
languages. But apart from this, languages are, by 
comparison, easy to teach, and easy to examine upon. 
Now, if there is any motive in education more power- 
ful than another, it is ease in the work itself. We are 
all, as teachers, copyists of that Irish celebrity who, 
when he came to a good bit of road, paced it to 
and fro a number of times before going forward to 
his destination on the rougher footing. 

So far I may seem to be arguing against the teach- 
ing of language at all, or, at any rate, the languages 
expressively called dead. I am not, however, pressing 
this point farther than as an illustration. I do not 
ask anyone to give an opinion against Classics as a 
subject of instruction ; although, undoubtedly, if this 
opinion were prevalent, my principal task would be 
very much lightened. I have merely analysed the 
utilities ascribed to the ancient and the modern Ian- 



LANGUAGES NOT PROPER FOR THE COMPETITION. IOI 

guages, with a view to settling their place in competi- 
tive examinations 

My thesis, then, is, that languages are not a proper 
subject for competition with a view to professional 
appointments. The explanation falls under two 
heads. 

In the first place, there are certain avocations 
where a foreign language must be known, because it 
has to be used in actual business. Such are the 
Indian spoken languages. Now, it is clear that in 
these cases the knowledge of the language, as being 
a sine qua non, must be made imperative. This, how- 
ever, as I think, is not a case for competition, but for 
a sufficient pass. There is a certain pitch of attain- 
ment that is desirable even at first entering the ser- 
vice , no one should fall below this, and to rise much 
above it cannot matter a great deal. At all events, I 
think the measure should be absolute and not relative. 
I would not give a man merit in a competition because 
another man happens to be worse than himself in a 
matter that all must know ; both the men may be 
absolutely bad. 

It may be the case that certain languages are so 
admirably constructed and so full of beauties that to 
study them is a liberal education in itself. But this 
does not necessarily hold of every language that an 
official of the British Empire may happen to need. 
It does not apply to the Indian tongues, nor to 
Chinese, nor, I should suppose, to the Fiji dialects. 
The only human faculty that is tested and brought 



102 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

into play in these acquisitions is the commonest kind 
of memory exercised for a certain time. The value 
to the Service of the man that can excel in spoken 
languages does not lie in his superior administrative 
ability, but in his being sooner fitted for actual duty. 
Undoubtedly, if two men go out to Calcutta so 
unequal in their knowledge of native languages, or 
in the preparation for that knowledge, that one can 
begin work in six months, while the other takes nine, 
there is an important difference between them. But 
what is the obvious mode of rewarding the differ- 
ence? Not, I should think, by pronouncing one a 
higher man in the scale of the competition, but by 
giving him some money prize in proportion to the 
redemption of his time for official work. 

Now, as regards the second kind of languages — 
those that are supposed to carry with them all the 
valuable indirect consequences that we have just re- 
viewed. There are in the Civil Service Scheme five 
such languages — two ancient, and three modern. 
They are kept there, not because they are ever to be 
read or spoken in the Service, but because they 
exercise some magical efficacy in elevating the whole 
tone of the human intellect. 

If I were discussing the Indian Civil Service in its 
own specialities, I would deprecate the introduction 
of extraneous languages into the competition, for this 
reason, that the Service itself taxes the verbal powers 
more than any other service. I do not think that 
Lord Macaulay and his colleagues had this circum- 
stance fully in view. Macaulay was himself a glutton 



SECONDARY USES OF LANGUAGE DIRECTLY TESTED. I03 

for language ; and, while in India, read a great quan- 
tity of Latin and Greek. But he was exempted from 
the ordinary lot of the Indian civil servant ; he had 
no native languages to acquire and to use. If a man 
both speaks and writes in good English, and con- 
verses familiarly in several Oriental dialects, his 
language memory is sufficiently well taxed, and if 
he carries with him one European language besides, 
it is as much as belongs to the fitness of things in 
that department. 

My proposal, then, goes the length of excluding 
all these five cultivated languages from the competi- 
tion, notwithstanding the influence that they may be 
supposed to have as general culture. In supporting 
it, I shall assume that everything that can be said in 
their favour is true to the letter : that they assist us 
in our own language, that they cultivate logic and 
taste, that they exemplify universal grammar, and so 
on. All that my purpose requires is to affirm that 
the same good ends may be attained in other ways : 
that Latin, Greek, &c, are but one of several instru- 
ments for instructing us in English composition, 
reasoning, or taste. My contention, then, is that the 
ends themselves are to be looked to, and not the 
means or instruments, since these are very various. 
English composition is, of course, a valuable end, 
whether got through the study of Latin, or through 
the study of English authors themselves, or through 
the inspiration of natural genius. Whatever amount 
of skill and attainment a candidate can show in this 
department should be valued in the examination for 



104 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

English ; and all the good that Latin has done for 
him would thus be entered to his credit. If, then, the 
study of Latin is found the best means of securing 
good marks in English, it will be pursued on that 
account ; if the candidate is able to discover other 
less laborious ways of attaining the end, he will 
prefer these ways. 

The same applies to all the other secondary ends 
of language. Let them be valued in their own de- 
partments. Let the improvement of the reasoning 
faculty be counted wherever that is shown in the 
examination. Good reasoning powers will evince 
themselves in many places, and will have their 
reward. 

The principle is a plain and obvious one. It is 
that of payment for results, without inquiring into 
the means. There are certain extreme cases where 
the means are not improperly coupled with the 
results in the final examination ; and these are illus- 
trations of the principle. Thu,s, in passing a candidate 
for the medical profession, the final end is his or her 
knowledge of diseases and their remedies. As it is 
admitted, however, that there are certain indispen- 
sable preparatory studies — anatomy, physiology, and 
materia medica — such studies are made part of the 
examination, because they contribute to the testing 
for the final end 

The argument is not complete until we survey 
another branch of the subject of examination in lan- 
guages. It will be observed in the wording of the 
programme that each separate language is coupled 



HISTORY AND LITERATURE DETACHABLE FROM LANGUAGE. 105 

with ' literature and history (or, as latterly ex- 
pressed, ' literature — including books selected by the 
candidate')'. It is the Language, Literature, and His- 
tory of Rome, Greece, &c. And the examination 
questions show the exact scope of these adjuncts, 
and also the values attached to them, as compared 
with the language by itself. 

Let us consider this matter a little. Take History 
first, as being the least perplexed. Greece and Rome 
have both a certain lasting importance attaching to 
their history and institutions ; and these accordingly 
are a useful study Of course, the extant writings are 
the chief groundwork of our knowledge of these, and 
must be read. But, at the present day, all that can 
be extracted from the originals is presented to the 
student in English books ; and to these he is exclu- 
sively referred for this part of his knowledge. In the 
small portion of original texts that a pupil at school 
or college toils through, he necessarily gets a few of 
the historical facts at first hand ; but he could much 
more easily get these few where he gets the rest — in 
the English compilations. Admitting, then, that the 
history and institutions of Greece and Rome consti- 
tute a valuable education, it is in out power to secure 
it independently of the original tongues. 

The other branch — Literature — is not so easily dis- 
posed of. In fact, the separating of the literature 
from the language, you will say, is a self-evident 
absurdity. That, however, only shows that you have 
not looked carefully into examination papers. I am 

not concerned with what the a priori imagination 
6 



106 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

may suppose to be Literature, but with the actual 
questions put by examiners under that name. I find 
that such questions are, generally speaking, very few, 
perhaps one or two in a long paper, and nearly all 
pertain to the outworks of literature, so to speak. 
Here is the Latin literature of one paper : — In what 
special branch of literature were the Romans inde- 
pendent of the Greeks ? Mention the principal 
writers in it, with the peculiar characteristics of each. 
Who was the first to employ the hexameter in Latin 
poetry, and in what poem ? To what language is 
Latin most nearly related ; and what is the cause of 
their great resemblance? The Greek literature of 
the same examination involves these points : — The 
Aristophanic estimate of Euripides, with criticisms on 
its taste and justice (for which, however, a historical 
subject is given as an alternative) ; the Greek chorus, 
and choric metres. Now such an examination is, in 
the first place, a most meagre view of literature ■ it 
does not necessarily exercise the faculty of critical 
discernment In the next place, it is chiefly a matter 
of compilation from English sources ; the actual read- 
ings of the candidate in Greek and Latin would be of 
little account in the matter. Of course, the choric 
metres could not be described without some know- 
ledge of Greek, but the matter is of very trifling 
importance in an educational point of view. Gene- 
rally speaking, the questions in literature, which in 
number bear no proportion to historical questions, 
are such as might be included under history, as the 
department of the History of Literature. 



LANGUAGE EXAMINATION PAPERS REVIEWED. 107 

: The distribution of the 750 marks allotted respec- 
tively to Latin and to Greek, in the scheme of 1875, 
is this. There are three papers : two are occupied 
exclusively with translation. The third is language, 
literature, and history : the language means purely 
grammatical questions ; so that possibly 583 marks 
are for the language proper. The remaining number, 
167, should be allotted equally between literature and 
history, but history has always the lion's share, and is 
in fact the only part of the whole examination that 
has, to my mind, any real worth. It is generally a 
very searching view of important institutions and 
events, together with what may be called their philo- 
sophy. Now, the reform that seems to me to be 
wanted is to strike out everything else from the 
examination. At the same time, I should like to see 
the experiment of a real literary examination, such as 
did not necessarily imply a knowledge of the ori- 
ginals. 

It is interesting to turn to the examination in 
modern languages, where the ancient scheme is 
copied, by appending literature and history. Here 
the Literature is decidedly more prominent and 
thorough. There is also a fair paper of History 
questions. What strikes us, however, in this, is a 
slavish adherence to the form, without the reality, of 
the ancient situation. We have independent histories 
of Greece and Rome, but scarcely of Germany, 
France, and Italy. Instead of partitioning Modern 
European history among the language-examiners for 
English, French, German, Italian, it would be better 



108 THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

to relieve them of history altogether, and place the 
subject as a whole in the hands of a distinct examiner. 
I would still allow merit for a literary examination in 
French, German, and Italian, but would strike off the 
languages, and let the candidate get up the literature 
as he chose. The basis of a candidate's literary 
knowledge, and his first introduction to literature, 
ought to be his own language : but he may extend 
his discrimination and his power by other literatures, 
either in translations 01 in originals, as he pleases ; 
still the examination, as before, should test the dis- 
crimination and the power, and not the vocabulary of 
the languages themselves. 

In order to do full justice to classical antiquity, I 
would allow markings at the rate of 500 for Political 
Institutions and History, and 250 for Literature. 
Some day this will be thought too much ; but political 
philosophy or sociology may become more systematic 
than at present, and history questions will then take 
a different form. 

In like manner, I would abolish the language- 
examination in modern languages, and give 250 
marks for the literature of each of the three modern 
languages — French, German, Italian. The history 
would be taken as Modern History, with an adequate 
total value. 

The objections to this proposal will mainly resolve 
themselves into its revolutionary character. The re- 
mark will at once be made that the classical languages 
would cease to be taught, and even the modern 
languages discouraged. The meaning of this I take 



LANGUAGE QUESTIONS TAKE THE PLACE OF SUBJECT. 109 

to be, that, if such teaching is judged solely by its 
fruits, it must necessarily be condemned. 

The only way to fence this unpalatable conclusion, 
is to maintain that the results could not be fully tested 
in an examination as suggested. Some of these are 
so fine, impalpable, and spiritual in their texture, that 
they cannot be seized by any questions that can be 
put ; and would be dropped out if the present system 
were changed. But results so untraceable cannot be 
proved to exist at all. 

So far from the results being missed by disusing 
the exercises of translation, one might contend that 
they would only begin to be appreciated fairly when 
the whole stress of the examination is put upon them. 
If an examiner sets a paper in Roman Law, con- 
taining long Latin extracts to be translated, he is 
starving the examination in Law by substituting for 
it an examination in Latin. Whatever knowledge of 
Latin terminology is necessary to the knowledge of 
Law should be required, and no more. So, it is not 
an examination in Aristotle to require long transla- 
tions from the Greek ; only by dispensing with all 
this, does the main subject receive proper attention. 

If the properly literary part of the present exami- 
nations were much of a reality, there would be a nice 
discussion as to the amount of literary tact that could 
be imparted in connection with a foreign language, as 
translated or translatable. But I have made an 
ample concession, when I propose that the trial 
should be made of examining in literature in this 
fashion , and 1 do not see any difficulty beyond the 



IIO THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS. 

initial repugnance of the professors of languages to be' 
employed in this task, and the fear, on the part of 
candidates, that undue stress might be placed on 
points that need a knowledge of originals. 

I will conclude with a remark on the apparent 
tendency of the wide options in the Commissioners' 
scheme. No one subject is obligatory; and the choice 
is so wide that by a very narrow range of acquire- 
ments a man may sometimes succeed. No doubt, as 
a rule, it requires a considerable mixture of subjects : 
both sciences and literature have to be included. But 
I find the case of a man entering the Indian Service 
by force of Languages alone, which I cannot but 
think a miscarriage. Then the very high marks 
assigned to Mathematics allow a man to win with no 
other science, and no other culture, but a middling 
examination in English. To those that think so 
highly of foreign languages, this must seem a much 
greater anomaly than it does to me. I would prefer, 
however, that such a candidate had traversed a wider 
field of science, instead ot excelling in high mathe- 
matics alone. 

There are, I should say, three great regions of study 
that should be fairly represented by every successful 
candidate. The first is the Sciences as a whole, in 
the form and order that I have suggested. The 
second is English Composition, in which successful 
men in the Indian competition sometimes show a 
cipher. The third is what I may call loosely the 
Humanities, meaning the department of institutions 



RANGE OF REQUIREMENTS TO BE MADE OBLIGATORY. Ill 

and history, with perhaps literature : to be computed 
in any or all of the regions of ancient and modern 
history. In every one of these three departments, I 
would fix a minimum, below which the candidate must 
not fall 



IV. 
THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY. 

ITS PRESENT ASPECT. 



THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY. 

ITS PRESENT ASPECT. 1 

In the present state of the controversy on classical 
studies, the publication of George Combe's contribu- 
tions to Education is highly opportune. Combe took 
the lead in the attack on these studies fifty years ago, 
and Mr. Jolly, the editor of the volume, gives a con- 
nected view of the struggle that followed. The results 
were, on the whole, not very great. A small portion 
of natural science was introduced into the secondary 
schools ; but as the classical teaching was kept up as 
before, the pupils were simply subjected to a greater 
crush of subjects ; they could derive very little bene- 
fit from science introduced on such terms. The 
effect on the Universities was nil ; they were true 
to Dugald Stewart's celebrated deliverance on their 
conservatism. 2 The general public, however, were 

1 Contemporary Review, August, 1879. A few months pre- 
viously, there were printed, in the Review, papers on the Classical 
question, by Professors Blackie and Bonamy Price ; both of which are 
here alluded to and quoted, so far as either is controverted or concurred 
with. 

2 "The academical establishments of some parts of Europe are not 
without their use to the historian of the human mind. Immovably 
moored to the same station by the strength of their cables and the 
weight of their anchors, they enable him to measure the rapidity of the 
current by which the rest of the world is borne along." 



Il6 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

not unmoved ; during a number of years there was 
a most material reduction in the numbers attending 
all the Scotch Universities, and the anti-classical 
agitation was reputed to be the cause. 

The reasonings of Combe will still repay perusal. 
He puts with great felicity and clearness the standing 
objections to the classical system ; while he is exceed- 
ingly liberal in his concessions, and moderate in his 
demands. " I do not denounce the ancient languages 
and classical literature on theii own account, or desire 
to see them cast into utter oblivion. I admit them to 
be refined studies, and think that there are individuals 
who, having a natural turn for them, learn them easily 
and enjoy them much. They ought, therefore, to be 
cultivated by all such persons. My objection is solely 
to the practice of rendering them the main substance 
of the education bestowed on young men who have 
no taste or talent for them, and whose pursuits in life 
will not render them a valuable acquisition." 

Before alluding to the more recent utterances in 
defence of classical teaching, J wish to lay out as 
distinctly as I can the various alternatives that are 
apparently now beiore us as respects the higher edu- 
cation — that is to say, the education begun in the 
secondary or grammar schools, and completed and 
stamped in the Universities. 

I. The existing system of requiring proficiency in 
both classical languages. Except in the University 
of London, this requirement is still imperative. The 
other Universities agree in exacting Latin and Greek 
as the condition of an Arts' Degree, and in very little 



THE EXISTING CLASSICAL TEACHING. 117 

else. The defenders of classics say with some truth 
that these languages are the principal basis of uni- 
formity in our degrees ; if they were struck out, the 
public would not know what a degree meant. 

How exclusive was the study of Latin and Greek 
in the schools in England, until lately, is too well 
known to need any detailed statement. A recent 
utterance of Mr. Gladstone, however, has felicitously 
supplied the crowning illustration. At Eton, in his 
time, the engrossment with classics was such as to 
keep out religious instruction ! 

As not many contend that Latin and Greek make 
an education in themselves, we may not improperly call 
to mind what other things it has been found possible 
to include with them in the scope of the Arts' Degree. 
The Scotch Universities were always distinguished 
from the English in the breadth of their require- 
ments : they have comprised, for many ages, three 
other subjects ; mathematics, natural philosophy, and 
mental philosophy (including logic and ethics). In 
exceptional instances, another science is added ; in 
one case, natural history, in another, chemistry. Ac- 
cording to the notions of scientific order and com- 
pleteness in the present day, a full course of the 
primary sciences would comprise mathematics, natural 
philosophy, chemistry, physiology or biology, and 
mental philosophy. The natural history branches 
are not looked upon as primary sciences ; they give 
no laws, but repeat the laws of the primary sciences 
while classifying the kingdoms of Nature. (See 
above, p. Si). 



lib THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

In John Stuart Mill's celebrated Address at St. 
Andrews, he stood up for the continuance of the 
Classics in all their integrity, and suddenly became a 
great authority with numbers of persons who pro- 
bably had never treated him as an authority before. 
But his advocacy of the classics was coupled with an 
equally strenuous advocacy for the extension of the 
scientific course to the full circle of the primary 
sciences ; that is to say, he urged the addition of 
chemistry and physiology to the received sciences. 
Those that have so industriously brandished his 
authority for retaining classics, are discreetly silent 
upon this other recommendation. He was too little 
conversant with the working of Universities to be 
aware that the addition of two sciences to the exist- 
ing course was impracticable ; and he was never 
asked which alternative he would prefer. I am in- 
clined to believe that he would have sacrificed the 
classics to scientific completeness ; he would have 
been satisfied with the quantum of these already 
gained at school. But while we have no positive as- 
surance on this point, I consider that his opinion 
should be wholly discounted as not bearing on the 
actual case. 

The founders of the University ot London at- 
tempted to realise Mill's conception to the full. They 
retained Classics ; they added English and a modern 
language, and completed the course of the primary 
sciences by including both Chemistry and Physiology. 
This was a noble experiment, and we can now report 
on its success. The classical languages, English and 



UNIVERSITY OF LONDON CURRICULUM. U9 

French or German, mathematics and natural philo- 
sophy, and (after a time) logic and moral philosophy, 
were all kept at a good standard ; thus exceeding the 
requirements of the Scotch Universities at the time 
by English and a modern language. The amount of 
attainment in chemistry was very small, and was dis- 
posed of in the Matriculation examination. Physio- 
logy was reserved for the final B.A. examination, and 
was the least satisfactory of all. Having myself sat 
at the Examining Board while Dr. Sharpey was 
Examiner in Physiology, I had occasion to know 
that he considered it prudent to be content with a 
mere show of studying the subject. Thus, though 
the experience of the University of London, as well 
as of the Scotch Universities, proves that the classical 
languages are compatible with a very tolerable scien- 
tific education, yet these will need to be curtailed if 
every one of the fundamental sciences, as Mill urged, 
is to be represented at a passable figure. 

In the various new proposals for extending the 
sphere of scientific knowledge, a much smaller amount 
of classics is to be required, but neither of the two 
languages is wholly dispensed with. If not taught at 
college, they must be taken up at school as a pre- 
paration for entering on the Arts' curriculum in the 
University. This can hardly be a permanent state 
of things, but it is likely to be in operation for some 
time. 

2. The remitting of Greek in favour of a modern 
language is the alternative most prominently before 
the public at present. It accepts the mixed form of 



120 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

the old curriculum, and replaces one of the dead 
languages by one of the living. Resisted by nearly 
the whole might of the classical party, this pro- 
posal finds favour with the lay professions as giving 
one language that will actually be useful to the pupils 
as a language. It is the very smallest change that 
would be a real relief. That it will speedily be carried 
we do not doubt. 

Except as a relaxation of the grip of classicism, 
this change is not altogether satisfactory. That there 
must be two languages (besides English) in order to 
an Arts' Degree is far from obvious. Moreover, 
although it is very desirable that every pupil should 
have facilities at school or at college for commencing 
modern languages, these do not rank as indispensable 
and universal culture, like the knowledge of sciences 
and of literature generally. They would have to be 
taught along with their respective literatures to cor- 
respond to the classics. 

Another objection to replacing classics by modern 
languages is the necessity of importing foreigners as 
teachers. Now, although there are plenty of French- 
men and Germans that can teach as well - as any 
Englishman, it is a painful fact that foreigners do 
oftener miscarry, both in teaching and in discipline, 
with English pupils, than our own countrymen. 
Foreign masters are well enough for those that go to 
them voluntarily with the desire of being taught ; it 
is as teachers in a compulsory curriculum that their 
inferiority becomes apparent. 

The retort is sometimes made to this proposal — 



ALTERNATIVE OF MODERN LANGUAGES. 121 

Why omit Greek rather than Latin ? Should you not 
retain the greater of the two languages ? This may 
be pronounced as mainly a piece of tactics ; for every 
one must know that the order of teaching Latin and 
Greek at the schools will never be topsyturvied to 
suit the fancy of an individual here and there, even 
although John Stuart Mill himself was educated in 
that order. On the scheme of withdrawing all foreign 
languages from the imperative curriculum, and pro- 
viding for them as voluntary adjuncts, such freedom 
of selection would be easy. 1 

3. Another alternative is to remit both Latin and 
Greek in favour of French and German. Strange to 
say, this advance upon the previous alternative was 
actually contained in Mr. Gladstone's ill-fated Irish 
University Bill. Had that Bill succeeded, the Irish 
would have been for fourteen years in the enjoyment 
of a full option for both the languages. 2 From a 
careful perusal of the debates, I could not discover 
that the opposition ever fastened upon this bold sur- 
render of the classical exclusiveness. 

The proposal was facilitated by the existence of 
professors of French and German in the Queen's 

1 If the two Literatures were studied, as they might be, by means of 
expositions and translations, the Greek would be first as a thing of 
course. Historians of the Latin authors are obliged to trace their sub- 
ject, in every department, to the corresponding authors in Greece. 

2 No doubt the classical languages would have been required, to 
some extent, in matriculating to enter college. This arrangement, 
however, as regarded the students that chose the modern languages, 
would have been found too burdensome by our Irish friends, and, on 
their expressing themselves to that effect, would have been soon dis- 
pensed with. 



122 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

Colleges. In the English and Scotch Colleges en- 
dowments are not as yet provided for these languages ; 
although it would be easy enough to make provision 
for them in Oxford and Cambridge. 

In favour of this alternative, it is urged that the 
classics, if entered on at all, should be entered on 
thoroughly and entirely. The two languages and 
literatures form a coherent whole, a homogeneous 
discipline ; and those that do not mean to follow this 
out should not begin it. Some of the upholders of 
classics take this view. 

4. More thorough-going still is the scheme of com- 
plete bifurcation of the classical and the modern 
sides. In our great schools there has been instituted 
what is called the modern side, made up of sciences 
and modern languages, togethei with Latin. The 
understanding hitherto has been, that the votaries of 
the ancient and classical side should alone proceed to 
the Universities ; the modern side being the intro- 
duction to commercial life, and to professions that 
dispense with a University degree. Here, as far as 
the schools are concerned, a fair scope is given to 
modern studies. » 

As was to be expected, the modern side is now 
demanding admission to the Universities on its own 
terms ; that is, to continue the same line of studies 
there, and to be crowned with the same distinctions 
as the classical side. This attempt to render school 
and college homogeneous throughout, to treat ancient 
studies and modern studies as of equal value in the 
eye of the law, will of course be resisted to the utmost. 



CLAIMS OF THE MODERN SIDE. 1 23 

Yet it seems the only solution likely to bring about 
a settlement that will last. 

The defenders of the classical system in its extreme 
exclusiveness are fond of adducing examples of very 
illustrious men who at college showed an utter in- 
capacity for science in its simplest elements. They 
say that, by classics alone, these men are what they 
are, and if their way had been stopped by serious 
scientific requirements, they would have never come 
before the world at all. The allegation is somewhat 
strongly put ; yet we shall assume it to be correct, on 
condition of being allowed to draw an inference. If 
some minds are so constituted for languages, and for 
classics in particular, may not there be other minds 
equally constituted for science, and equally incapable 
of taking up two classical languages ? Should this 
be granted, the next question is — Ought these two 
classes of minds to be treated as equal in rights and 
privileges ? The upholders of the present system say, 
No. The Language mind is the true aristocrat ; the 
Science mind is an inferior creation. Degrees and 
privileges are for the man that can score languages, 
with never so little science ; outer darkness is as- 
signed to the man whose forte is science alone. But 
a war of caste in education is an unseemly thing; and, 
after all the levelling operations that we have passed 
through, it is not likely that this distinction will be 
long preserved. 

The modern side, as at present constituted, still re- 
tains Latin. There is a considerable strength of 
feeling in favour of that language for all kinds of 



124 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

people ; it is thought to be a proper appendage of 
the lay professions ; and there is a wide-spread opinion 
in favour of its utility for English. So much is this 
the case, that the modern-siders are at present quite 
willing to come under a pledge to keep up Latin, 
and to pass in it with a view to the University. In 
fact, the schools find this for the present the most 
convenient arrangement. It is easier to supply teach- 
ing in Latin than in a modern language, or in most 
other things ; and while Latin continues to be held in 
respect, it will remain untouched. Yet the quantity 
of time occupied by it, with so little result, must ulti- 
mately force a departure from the present curriculum. 
The real destination of the modern side is to be 
modern throughout. It should not be rigorously tied 
down even to a certain number of modern languages. 
English and one other language ought to be quite 
enough ; and the choice should be free. On this 
footing, the modern side ought to have its place in 
the schools as the co-equal of classics ; it would be 
the natural precursor of the modernised alternatives 
in the Universities ; those where knowledge subjects 
predominate. 

The proposal to give an inferior degree to a cur- 
riculum that excludes Greek should, in my judgment, 
be simply declined. It is, however, a matter of opinion 
whether, in point of tactics, the modern party did not 
do well to accept this as an instalment in the mean- 
time. The Oxford offer, as I understand it, was so 
far liberal, that the new degree was to rank equal in 
privileges with the old, although inferior in prestige. 



SURRENDER OF CLAIMS FOR SOME. 1 25 

In Scotland, the degree conceded by the classical 
party to a Greekless education was worthless, and was 
offered for that very reason. 1 

Among the adherents of classics, Professor Blackie 
is distinguished for surrendering the study of them 
in the case of those that cannot profit by them. He 
believes that with a free alternative, such as the thor- 
ough bifurcation into two sides would give, they would 
still hold their ground, and bear all their present fruits. 
His classical brethren, however, do not in general 
share this conviction. They seem to think that if 
they can no longer compel every University graduate 
to pass beneath the double yoke of Rome and Greece, 
these two illustrious nationalities will be in danger of 
passing out of the popular mind altogether. For 
my own part, I do not share their fears, nor do I 
think that, even on the voluntary footing, the study 
of the two languages will decline with any great 
rapidity. As I have said, the belief in Latin is wide 
and deep. Whatever may be urged as to the extra- 
ordinary stringency of the intellectual discipline now 
said to be given by means of Latin and Greek, I am 
satisfied that the feeling with both teachers and 
scholars is, that the process of acquisition is not toil- 
some to either party ; less so perhaps than anything 
that would come in their place. Of the hundreds of 
hours spent over them, a very large number are 
associated with listless idleness. Carlyle describes 

1 One possible consequence of a Natural Science Degree might have 
been, that the public would have turned to it with favour, while the 
old one sank into discredit. 



126 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

Scott's novels as a " beatific lubber land " ; with the 
exception of the " beatific," we might say nearly the 
same of classics. To all which must be added the 
immense endowments of classical teaching ; not only 
of old date but of recent acquisition. It will be a 
very long time before these endowments can be 
diverted, even although the study decline steadily in 
estimation. 

- The thing that stands to reason is to place the 
modern and the ancient studies on exactly the same 
footing ; to accord a fair field and no favour. The 
public will decide for themselves in the long run. If 
the classical advocates are afraid of this test, they 
have no faith in the merits of their own case. 

The arguments pro and con on the question have 
been almost exhausted. Nothing is left except to 
vary the expression and illustration. Still, so long as 
the monopoly exists, it will be argued and counter- 
argued ; and, if there are no new reasons, the old will 
have to be iterated. 

Perhaps the most hackneyed of all the answers to 
the case for the classics is the one that has been most 
rarely replied to. I mean the fact that the Greeks 
were not acquainted with any language but their own. 
I have never known an attempt to parry this thrust. 
Yet, besides the fact itself, there are strong presump- 
tions in favour of the position that to know a language 
well, you should devote your time and strength to it 
alone, and not attempt to learn three or four. Of 
course, the Greeks were in possession of the most 



EXAMPLE FROM THE GREEKS THEMSELVES. 1 27 

perfect language, and were not likely to be gainers 
by studying the languages of their contemporaries. 
So, we too are in possession of a very admirable 
language, although put together in a nondescript 
fashion ; and it is not impossible that if Plato had 
his Dialogues to compose among us, he would give 
his whole strength to working up our own resources, 
and not trouble himself with Greek. The popular 
dictum — multnm non multa, doing one thing well — 
may be plausibly adduced in behalf of parsimony 
in the study of languages. 

The recent agitation in Cambridge, in Oxford, and 
indeed, all over the country, for remitting the study 
of Greek as an essential of the Arts' Degree, has led 
to a reproduction of the usual defences of things as 
they are. The articles in the March number of the 
Contemporary Review, i8yg, by Professors Blackie and 
Bonamy Price, may claim to be the demiers mots. 

Professor Blackie's article is a warning to the 
teachers of classics, to the effect that they must 
change their front ; that, whereas the value of the 
classics as a key to thought has diminished, and is 
diminishing, they must by all means in the first place 
improve their drill. In fact, unless something can be 
done to lessen the labour of the acquisition by better 
teaching, and to secure the much-vaunted intel- 
lectual discipline of the languages, the battle will soon 
be lost. Accordingly, the professor goes minutely 
into what he conceives the best methods of teaching. 
It is not my purpose to follow him in this sufficiently 
interesting discussion. I simply remark that he is 



128 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

staking the case, for the continuance of Latin and 
Greek in the schools, on the possibility of something 
like an entire revolution in the teaching art. Revolu- 
tion is not too strong a word for what is proposed. 
The weak part of the new position is that the value 
of the languages as languages has declined, and has 
to be made up by the incident of their value as drill. 
This is, to say the least, a paradoxical position for a 
language teacher. If it is mere drill that is wanted, 
a veiy small corner of one language would suffice. 
The teacher and the pupil alike are placed between 
the two stools — interpretation and drill. A new 
generation of teachers must arise to attain the dex- 
terity requisite for the task. 

Professor Blackie's concession is of no small im- 
portance in the actual situation. " No one is to re- 
ceive a full degree without showing a fair proficiency 
in two foreign languages, one ancient and one modern, 
with free option." This would almost satisfy the 
present demand everywhere, and for some time to 
come. 

The article of Professor Bonamy Price is conceived 
in even a higher strain than the other. There is so 
far a method of argumentation in it that the case is 
laid out under four distinct heads, but there is no 
decisive separation of reasons ; many of the things 
said under one head might easily be transferred with- 
out the sense of dislocation to any other head. The 
writer indulges in high-flown rhetorical assertions 
rather than in specific facts and arguments. The first 
merit of classics is that " they are languages ; not 



ARGUMENT FROM RESULTS. 1 29 

particular sciences, nor definite branches of know- 
ledge, but literatures ". Under this head we have 
such glowing sentences as these : " Think of the 
many elements of thought a boy comes in contact 
with when he reads Caesar and Tacitus in succession, 
Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle ". 
" See what is implied in having read Homer intelli- 
gently through, or Thucydides or Demosthenes; what 
light will have been shed on the essence and laws of 
human existence, on political society, on the relations 
of man to man, on human nature itself." There are 
various conceivable ways of counter-arguing these 
assertions, but the shortest is to call for the facts — 
the results upon the many thousands that have passed 
through their ten years of classical drill. Professor 
Campbell of St. Andrews, once remarked, with re- 
ference to the value of Greek in particular, that the 
question would have to be ultimately decided by the 
inner consciousness of those that have undergone 
the study. To this we are entitled to add, their 
powers as manifested to the world, of which powers 
spectators can be the judges. When, with a few- 
brilliant exceptions, we discover nothing at all re- 
markable in the men that have been subjected to the 
classical training, we may consider it as almost a 
waste of time to analyse the grandiloquent assertions 
of Mr. Bonamy Price. But if we were to analyse 
them, we should find that boys never read Caesar and 
Tacitus through in succession ; still less Thucydides 
Demosthenes, and Aristotle ; that very few men read 
and understand these writers ; that the shortest way 



130 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

to come into contact with Aristotle is to avoid his 
Greek altogether, and take his expositors and trans- 
lators in the modern languages. 

The professor is not insensible to the reproach that 
the vaunted classical education has been a failure, as 
compared with these splendid promises. He says, 
however, that though many have failed to become 
classical scholars in the full sense of the word, " it 
does not follow that they have gained nothing from 
their study of Greek and Latin ; just the contrary is 
the truth ". The " contrary " must mean that they 
have gained something ; which something is stated to 
be " the extent to which the faculties of the boy have 
been developed, the quantity of impalpable but not 
less real attainments he has achieved, and his general 
readiness for life, and for action as a man '' But it 
is becoming more and more difficult to induce people 
to spend a long course of youthful years upon a con- 
fessedly impalpable result. We might give up a few 
months to a speculative and doubtful good, but we 
need palpable consequences to show for our years 
spent on classics. Next comes the admission that 
the teaching is often bad. But why should the teach- 
ing be so bad, and what is the hope of making it 
better? Then we are told that science by itself 
leaves the largest and most important portion of the 
youths' nature absolutely undeveloped. But, in the 
first place, it is not proposed to reduce the school and 
college curriculum to science alone ; and, in the next 
place, who can say what are the " impalpable " results 
of science? 



WORTH OF THE CLASSICAL WRITERS. 131 

The second branch of the argument relates to the 
greatness of the classical writers. Undoubtedly the 
Greek and Roman worlds produced some very great 
writers, and a good many not great. But the great- 
ness of Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, 
and Aristotle can* be exhibited in a modern render- 
ing ; while no small portion of the poetical excel- 
lence of Homer and the Dramatists can be made 
apparent without toiling at the original tongues. 
The value of the languages then resolves itself, as 
has been often remarked, into a residuum. Some- 
thing also is to be said for the greatness of the 
writers that have written in modern times. Sir John 
Herschel remarked long ago that the human intellect 
cannot have degenerated, so long as we are able to 
quote Newton, Lagrange and Laplace, against Aris- 
totle and Archimedes. I would not undertake to say 
that any modern mind has equalled Aristotle in the 
range of his intellectual powers ; but in point of in- 
tensity of grasp in any one subject, he has many 
rivals ; so that to obtain his equal, we have only to 
take two or three first-rate moderns. 

If a few fanatics are to go on lauding to the skies 
the exclusive and transcendent greatness of the classi- 
cal writers, we shall probably be tempted to scrutinize 
their merits more severely than is usual. Many things 
could be said against their sufficiency as instructors 
in matters of thought ; and many more against the 
low and barbarous tone of their morale — the inhum- 
anity and brutality of both their principles and their 
practice. All this might no doubt be very easily 



132 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

overdone, and would certainly be so, if undertaken in 
the style of Professor Price's panegyric. 

The professor's third branch of the argument comes 
to the real point ; namely, what is there in Greek and 
Latin that there is not in the modern tongues ? For 
one thing, says the professor, they are dead ; which of 
course we allow. Then, being dead, they must be 
learnt by book and by rule ; they cannot be learnt by 
ear. Here, however, Professor Blackie would dissent, 
and would say that the great improvement of teach- 
ing, on which the salvation of classical study now 
hangs, is to make it a teaching by the ear. But, says 
Professor Price : " A Greek or Latin sentence is a nut 
with a strong shell concealing the kernel — a puzzle, 
demanding reflection, adaptation of means to end, 
and labour for its solution, and the educational value 
resides in the shell and in the puzzle " As this strain 
of remark is not new, there is nothing new to be said 
in answer to it. Such puzzling efforts are certainly 
not the rule in learning Latin and Greek. Moreover, 
the very same terms would describe what may happen 
equally often in reading difficult authors in French, 
German, or Italian. Would not the pupil find puzzles 
and difficulties in Dante, or in Goethe? And are 
there not many puzzling exercises in deciphering 
English authors ? Besides, what is the great objec- 
tion to science, but that it is too puzzling for minds 
that are quite competent for the puzzles of Greek and 
Latin ? Once more, the teaching of any language 
must be very imperfect, if it brings about habitually 
such situations of difficulty as are here described. 






ARGUMENTS FOR CLASSICS. 1 33 

The professor relapses into a cooler and correcter 
strain when he remarks that the pupil's mind is ne- 
cessarily more delayed over the expression of a thought 
in a foreign language (whether dead or alive matters 
not), and therefore remembers the meaning better. 
Here, however, the desiderated reform of teaching 
might come into play. Granted that the boy left to 
himself would go more rapidly through Burke than 
through Thucydides, might not his pace be retarded 
by a well-directed cross-examination ; with this ad- 
vantage, that the length of attention might be gradu- 
ated according to the importance of the subject, and 
not according to the accidental difficulty of the 
language ? 

The professor boldly grapples with the alleged 
waste of time in classics, and urges that " the gain 
may be measured by the time expended," which is 
very like begging the question. 

One advantage adduced under this head deserves 
notice. The languages being dead, as well as all the 
societies and interests that they represent, they do not 
excite the prejudices and passions of modern life. 
This, however, may need some qualification. Grote 
wrote his history of Greece to counterwork the party 
bias of Mitford. The battles of despotism, oligarchy, 
and democracy are to this hour fought over the dead 
bodies of Greece and Rome. If the professor meant 
to insinuate, that those that have gone through the 
classical training are less violent as partisans, more 
dispassionate in political judgments, than the rest of 
mankind, we can only say that we should not have 



134 THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY — PRESENT ASPECT. 

known this from our actual experience. The dis- 
covery of some sweet, oblivious, antidote to party 
feeling seems, as far as we can judge, to be still in 
the future. If we want studies that will, while they 
last, thoroughly divert the mind from the prejudices 
of party, science is even better than ancient history ; 
there are no party cries connected with the Binomial 
Theorem. 

The professor's last branch of argument, I am 
obliged, with all deference, to say, contains no argu- 
ment at all. It is that, in classical education, a close 
contact is established between the mind of the boy 
and the mind of the master. lie does not even 
attempt to show how the effect is peculiar to classical 
teaching. The whole of this part of the paper is, in 
fact, addressed, by way of remonstrance, to the writer's 
own friends, the classical teachers. He reproaches 
them for their inefficiency, for their not being Arnolds. 
It is not my business to interfere between him and 
them in this matter. So much stress does he lay 
upon the teacher's part in the work, that I almost 
expected the admission — that a good teacher in Eng- 
lish, German, natural history, political economy, 
might even be preferable to a bad teacher of Latin 
and Greek. 

The recent Oxford contest has brought out the 
eminent oratorical powers of Canon Liddon ; and we 
have some curiosity in noting his contributions to the 
classical side. I refer to his letters in the Times. 
The gist of his advocacy of Greek is contained in the 



CANON LIDDON'S ARGUMENT. 1 35 

following allegations. First, the present system en- 
ables a man to recur with profit and advantage to 
Greek literature. To this, it has been often replied, 
that by far the greater number are too little familiar- 
ized with the classical languages, and especially 
Greek, to make the literature easy reading. But 
farther, the recurring to the study of ancient authors 
by busy professional men in the present day, is an 
event of such extreme rarity that it cannot be taken 
into account in any question of public policy. The 
second remark is, that the half-knowledge of the 
ordinary graduate is a link between the total blank 
of the outer world, and the thorough knowledge of 
the accomplished classic. I am not much struck by 
the force of this argument. I think that the classical 
scholar, might, by expositions, commentaries, and 
translations, address the outer world equally well, 
without the intervening mass of imperfect scholars. 
Lastly, the Canon puts in a claim for his own cloth. 
The knowledge of Greek paves the way for serious 
men to enter the ministry in middle life. Argument 
would be thrown away upon any one that could for a 
moment entertain this as a sufficient reason for com- 
pelling every graduate in Arts to study Greek. The 
observation that I would make upon it has a wider 
bearing. Middle life is not too late for learning any 
language that we suddenly discover to be a want ; the 
stimulus of necessity or of strong interest, and the 
wider compass of general knowledge, compensate for 
the diminution of verbal memory. 



V. 

METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 



METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING 
SOCIETIES. 1 

By "Metaphysical Study," or " Metaphysics," I here 
mean — what seems intended by the designation in its 
current employment at present — the circle of the 
mental or subjective sciences. The central depart- 
ment of the field is PSYCHOLOGY, and the adjunct to 
psychology is LOGIC, which has its foundations partly 
in psychology, but still more in the sciences alto- 
gether, whose procedure it gathers up and formulates. 
The outlying and dependent branches are : the 
narrower metaphysics or Ontology, Ethics, Sociology, 
together with Art or ./Esthetics. There are other 
applied sciences of the department, as Education and 
Philology. 

The branches most usually looked upon as the 
cognate or allied studies of the subjective department 
of human knowledge are, Psychology, Logic, Onto- 
logy, Ethics. The debates in a society like the 
present will generally be found to revolve in the orbit 
thus chalked out. It is the sphere of the most 
animated controversies, and the widest discordance of 

1 An Address, delivered on the 28th of March, 1877, to the Edin- 
burgh University Phiiosophical Society. Contemporary Review, 
April, 1877. 



140 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

view. The additional branch most nearly connected 
with the group is Sociology, which under that name, 
and under the older title, the Philosophy of History, 
has opened up a new series of problems, of the kind 
to divide opinions and provoke debate. A quieter 
interest attaches to ^Esthetics, although the subject is 
a not unfruitful application and test of psychological 
laws. 

My remarks will embrace, first, the aims, real and 
factitious, in the study of this group of sciences ; and 
next, the polemic conduct of such study, or the utility 
and management of debating societies, instituted in 
connection therewith. 

The two sciences — PSYCHOLOGY and LOGIC — 
I consider the fundamental and knowledge-giving 
departments. The others are the applications of 
these to the more stirring questions of human life. 
Now, the successful cultivation of the field requires 
you to give at least as much attention to the root 
sciences as you give to the branch sciences. That is 
to say, psychology, in its pure and proper character, 
and logic, in its systematic array, should be kept 
before the view, concurrently with ontology, ethics, 
and sociology. Essays and debates tending to clear 
up and expound systematic psychology and syste- 
matic logic should make a full half of the society's 
work. 

Does any one feel a doubt upon the point, as so 
stated? If so, it will lie upon him to show that 
Psychology, in its methodical pursuit, is a needless 



PSYCHOLOGY AND LOGIC FUNDAMENTAL. 141 

and superfluous employment of strength ; that the 
problems of ethics, ontology, &c, can be solved 
without it — a hard task indeed, so long as they are 
unsolved in any way. I have no space for indulging 
in a dissertation on the value of methodical study 
and arrangement in the extension of our know- 
ledge, as opposed to the promiscuous mingling of 
different kinds of facts, which is often required in 
practice, but repugnant to the increase of knowledge. 
If you want to improve our acquaintance with the 
sense of touch, you accumulate and methodize all 
the experiences relating to touch ; you compare them, 
see whether they are consistent or inconsistent, select 
the good, reject the bad, improve the statement of 
one by light borrowed from the others ; you mark 
desiderata, experiments to be tried, or observations to 
be sought. All that time, you refrain from wandering 
into other spheres of mental phenomena. You make 
use of comparison with the rest of the senses, it may 
be, but you keep strictly to the points of analogy, 
where mutual lights are to be had. This is the 
culture of knowledge as such, and is the best, the 
essential, preparation for practical questions involving 
the particular subject along with others. 

To take an example from the question of the Will. 
I do not object to the detaching and isolating of the 
problem of free-will, as a matter for discussion and 
debate ; but I think that it can be handled to equal, if 
not greater advantage, in the systematic psychology of 
voluntary power. Those that have never tried it in 
this last form have not obtained the best vantage- 



142 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

ground for overcoming the inevitable subtleties that 
invest it. 

The great problem of External Perception has a 
psychological place, where its difficulties are very 
much attenuated, to say the least of it ; and v however 
convenient it may be to treat it as a detached pro- 
blem, we should carry with us into the discussion all 
the lights that we obtain while regarding it as it 
stands among the intellectual powers. 

It is in systematic Psychology that we are most 
free to attend to the defining of terms (without which 
a professed science is mere moonshine), to the formu- 
lating of axioms and generalities, to the concate- 
nating and taking stock of all the existing knowledge, 
and to the appraising of it at its real value. If these 
things are neglected, there is nothing that I see to 
constitute a psychology at all. 

As to the other fundamental science, LOGIC, the 
same remarks may be repeated. Of debated ques- 
tions, a certain number pertain properly to logic ; yet 
most of these relate to logic at its points of contact 
with psychology. Since we have got out of the 
narrow round of the Aristotelian syllogism, we have 
agreed to call logic ars artium, or, better still, scientia 
scientianun, the science that deals with the sciences 
altogether — both object sciences and subject sciences. 
Now this I take to be a study quite apart from 
psychology in particular, although, as I have said, 
touching it at several points. It reviews all science 
and all knowledge, as to its structure, method, arrange- 



DISCUSSIONS IN LOGIC PROPER. J43 

ment, classification, probation, enlargement. It deals 
in generalities the most general of any. By taking 
up what belongs to all knowledge, it seems to rise 
above the matter of knowledge to the region of pure 
form ; it demands, therefore, a peculiar subtlety of 
handling, and may easily land us, as we are all aware, 
in knotty questions and quagmires. 

Now what I have to repeat in this connection is, 
that you should, in your debates, overhaul portions 
or chapters of systematic logic, with a view to present 
the difficulties in their natural position in the subject. 
You might, for example, take up the question as to 
the Province of logic, with its divisions, parts, and 
order — all which admit of many various views — and 
bring forward the vexed controversies under lights 
favourable to their resolution. Regarding logic as an 
aid to the faculties in tackling whatever is abstruse, 
you should endeavour to cultivate and enhance its 
powers, in this particular, by detailed exposition and 
criticism of all its canons and prescriptions. The 
department of Classification is a good instance ; a 
region full of delicate subtleties as well as " bread- 
and-butter " applications. 

It is in this last view of logic that we can canvass 
philosophical systems upon the ground of their method 
or procedure alone. Looking at the absence, in any 
given system, of the arts and precautions that are 
indispensable to the establishment of truth in the 
special case, we may pronounce against it, a priori , 
we know that such a system can be true only by 
accident, or else by miracle. We may reasonably 



144 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

demand of a system-builder — Is he in the narrow way 
that leadeth to truth, or in the broad way that leadeth 
somewhere else ? 

I have said that I consider the connection between 
Logic and Psychology to be but slender, although not 
unimportant. The amount and nature of this con- 
nection would reward a careful consideration. There 
would be considerable difficulty in seeing any connec- 
tion at all between the Aristotelian Syllogism and 
psychology, but for the high-sounding designations 
appended to the notion and the proposition — simple 
apprehension and judgment — of which I fail to dis- 
cover the propriety or relevance. I know that Grote 
gave a very profound turn to the employment of the 
term "judgment" by Aristotle, as being a recognition 
of the relativity of knowledge to the affirming mind. 
I am not to say, absolutely, " Ice is cold " ; I am to 
say that, to the best of my judgment or belief, or in 
so far as I am concerned, ice is cold. This, however, 
has little to do with the logic of the syllogism, and 
not much with any logic. So, when we speak of a 
" notion," we must understand it as apprehended by 
some mind ; but for nearly all purposes, this is 
assumed tacitly ; it need not appear in a formal desig- 
nation, which, not being wanted, is calculated to 
mislead. 

With these remarks on the two fundamental sciences 
of our group, I now turn to the applied or derivative 
sciences, wherein the great controversies stand out 
most conspicuous, which, in fact, exist for the pur- 



APPLIED OR DERIVATIVE SCIENCES. 1 45 

pose of contention — Ontology and Ethics. These 
branches were in request long before the mother 
sciences — psychology and logic — came into being at 
all. They had occupied their chief positions without 
consulting the others, partly because these were not 
there to consult, and partly because they were not 
inclined to consult any extraneous authority. By On- 
tology we may designate the standing controversies 
of the intellectual powers — perception, innate ideas, 
nominalism versus realism, and noumenon versus phe- 
nomenon. I am not going to pronounce upon these 
questions ; I have already recommended the alterna- 
tive mode of approaching them under systematic 
psychology and logic ; and I will now regard them 
as constituents of the fourfold enumeration of the 
metaphysical sciences. 

The Germans may be credited for teaching us, or 
trying to teach us, to distinguish " bread and butter " 
from what passes beyond, transcends bread and butter. 
With them the distinction is thoroughly ingrained, 
and comes to hand at a moment's notice. If I am 
to review in detail what may be considered the prac- 
tical or applied departments of logic and psychology, 
I am in danger of trenching on their " bread-and- 
butter " region. Before descending, therefore, into 
the larder, let us first spend a few seconds in con- 
sidering psychology as the pursuit of truth in all 
that relates to our mental constitution. If difficulty 
be a stimulus to the human exertions, it may be 
found here. To ascertain, fix, and embody the precise 
truth in regard to the facts of the mind is about as 



146 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

hard an undertaking as could be prescribed to a man. 
But this is another way of saying that psychology is 
not a very advanced science ; is not well stored with 
clear and certain doctrines ; and is unable, therefore, 
to confer any very great precision on its dependent 
branches, whether purely speculative or practical. In 
a word, the greatest modesty or humility is the 
deportment most becoming to all that engage in this 
field of labour, even when doing their best ; while 
the same virtues in even greater measure are due 
from those engaging in it without doing their best. 

It must be admitted, however, that the highest 
evidence and safeguard of truth is application. In 
every other science, the utility test is final. The 
great parent sciences — mathematics, physics, chem- 
istry, physiology — have each a host of filial depen- 
dents, in close contact with the supply of human 
wants; and the success of the applications is the 
testimony to the truth of the sciences applied. Thus, 
although we may not narrow the sphere of truth to 
bread and butter, yet we have no surer test of the 
truth itself. Our trade requires navigation, and navi- 
gation verifies astronomy ; and, but for navigation, 
we may be pretty confident that astronomy would 
now have very little accuracy to boast of. 

To come then to the practical bearings or out- 
goings of psychology, assisted by logic. My conten- 
tion is that the parent sciences and the filial sciences 
should be carried on together ; that theses should be 
extracted by turns from all ; that the lights thus 
obtained would be mutual. I will support the posi- 



PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION. 1 47 

tion by a review of the subjects thus drawn into the 
metaphysical field. 

Foremost among these applied sciences I would 
place EDUCATION, the subject of the day. The 
priority of mention is due not so much to its special 
or pre-eminent importance, as to its being the most 
feasible and hopeful of the practical applications of 
conjoined psychology and logic. I say this, however, 
with a more express eye to intellectual education. I 
deem it quite possible to frame a practical science 
applicable to the training of the intellect that shall be 
precise and definite in a very considerable measure. 
The elements that make up our intellectual furniture 
can be stated with clearness ; the laws of intellectual 
growth or acquisition are almost the best ascertained 
generalities of the human mind ; even the most com- 
plicated studies can be analyzed into their com- 
ponents, partly by psychology and partly by the 
higher logic. In a word, if we cannot make a science 
of education, as far as Intellect is concerned, we may 
abandon metaphysical study altogether. 

I do not speak with the same confidence as to moral 
education. There has long been in existence a re- 
spectable rule-of-thumb practice in this region, the 
result of a sufficiently wide experience. There are 
certain psychological laws, especially those relating 
to the formation of moral habits, that have a con- 
siderable value ; but to frame a theory of moral 
education, on a level in a point of definiteness with 
the possible theory of intellectual education, is a 



148 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

task that I should not like to have imposed upon me. 
In point of fact, two problems are joined in one, to 
the confusion of both. There is first the vast ques- 
tion of moral control, which stretches far and wide 
over many fields, and would have to be tracked with 
immense labour: it belongs to the arts of government ; 
it comes under moral suasion, as exercised by the 
preacher and orator; it even implicates the tact of 
diplomacy. I do not regard this as a properly educa- 
tional question (although it refers to an art that every 
teacher must try to master) ; that is to say, its solu- 
tion is not connected with education processes 
strictly so called. The second problem of moral 
education is the one really within the scope of the 
subject — the problem of fixing moral bents or habits, 
when the right conduct is once initiated. On this 
head, some scientific insight is attainable ; and sug- 
gestions of solid value may in time accrue, although 
there never can be the precision attainable in the 
intellectual region. 

I will next advert to the applied science of Art or 
Esthetics, long a barren ground so far as scientific 
handling was concerned, but now a land of promise. 
The old thesis, " What is Beauty ? " a good debating 
society topic, is, I hope, past contending about. The 
numerous influences that concur in works of art, or in 
natural beauty, present a fine opening for delicate 
analysis ; at the same time, they implicate the vaguest 
and least advanced portion of psychology — the 
Emotions. The German philosophers have usually 



ESTHETICS : HEDONICS. 149 

ranked aesthetics as one of the subjective sciences ; 
but, it is only of late that the department has taken 
shape in their country. Lessing gave a great impulse 
to literary art, and originated a number of pregnant 
suggestions ; and the German love of music has 
necessarily led to theories as well as to compositions. 
We are now in the way to that consummation of 
aesthetics which may be described as containing (i) a 
reference to psychology as the mother science, (2) a 
classification, comparison, and contrast of the fine 
arts themselves, and (3) an induction of the principles 
of art composition from the best examples. Anything 
like a thorough sifting of fine-art questions would 
strain psychology at every point — senses, emotions, 
intellect ; and, if criticism is to go deep, it must 
ground upon psychological reasons. Now the mere 
artist can never be a psychologist ; the art critic may, 
but seldom will ; hence, as they will not come over 
to us, some of us must go over to them. The Art 
discussion of the greatest fountains of human feeling 
— love and anger — wouF react with advantage upon 
the very difficult psychology of these emotions, so 
long the sport of superficiality. 

But I hold that aesthetics is but a corner of a larger 
field that is seldom even named among the sciences 
of mind ; I mean human happiness as a whole, 
" eudaemonics," or " hedonics," or whatever you please 
to call it That the subject is neglected, I do not 
affirm ; but it is not cultivated in the proper place, or 
in the proper light-giving connection — that is to say, 
under the psychology of the human feelings. It 



150 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

should have at once a close reference to psychology, 
and an independent construction ; while either in 
comprehending aesthetics, or in lying side by side 
with that, it would give and receive illumination. 
The researches now making into the laws and limits 
of human sensibility, if they have any value, ought to 
lead to the economy of pleasure and the abatement 
of pain. The analysis of sensation and of emotion 
points to this end. Whoever raises any question as to 
human happiness should refer it, in the first instance, 
to psychology ; in the next, to some general scheme 
that would answer for a science of happiness; and, 
thirdly, to an induction of the facts of human ex- 
perience ; the three distinct appeals correcting one 
another. If psychology can contribute nothing to the 
point, it confesses to a desideratum for future in- 
quirers. 

I am not at all satisfied with the coupling of happi- 
ness with ethics, as is usually done. Ethics is the 
sphere of duty ; happiness is mentioned only to be 
repressed and discouraged. This is not the situation 
for unfolding all the blossoms of human delight, nor 
for studying to allay every rising uneasiness. He 
would be a rare ethical philosopher that would permit 
full scope to such an operation within his grounds ; 
neither Epicurus nor Bentham could come up to this 
mark. But even if the thing were permitted, the 
lights are not there ; it is only by combining the parent 
psychology and the hedonic derivative, that the work 
can be done. It is neither disrespect nor disadvantage 
to duty, that it is not mentioned in the department 



HEDONICS SEPARATE FROM ETHICS. 151 

until the very end. To cultivate happiness is not 
selfishness or vice, unless you confine it to self; and 
the mere act of inquiring does not so confine it. If 
you are in other respects a selfish man, you will apply 
your knowledge for your own sole behoof ; if you are 
not selfish, you will apply it for the good of your 
fellows also, which is another name for virtue. 

But the obstacles to a science of happiness are not 
solely due to the gaps and deficiencies in our psycho- 
logical knowledge; they are equally owing to the 
prevailing terrorism in favour of self-denial at all 
hands. Many of the maxims as to happiness would 
not stand examination if people felt themselves free 
to discuss them. You must work yourselves into a 
fervour of revolt and defiance, before you call in 
question Paley's declaration that "happiness is equally 
distributed among all orders of the community". 
I do not know whether I should wonder most at the 
cheerful temperament or the complacent optimism of 
Adam Smith, when he asks, " What can be added to 
the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out 
of debt, and has a clear conscience?" 1 When the 

1 This very plausible utterance begs every question. There would 
be some difficulty in condensing an equal amount of fallacy, confusion 
of thought, in so few words. 

In the first place, it assumes that the three requisites — health, 
freedom from debt, and a good conscience — are matters of easy and 
general attainment ; that they are, in fact, the rule among human 
beings. Is this really so ? 

Take Health, a word of very wide import. There is a certain small 
amount, such as is marked by being out of the physician's hands, but 
implying very little of the energy needed for the labours and the enjoyment 
of life. There is a high and resplendent degree that renders toil easy, 



152 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

greatest philosophers talk thus, what is to be expected 
from the unphilosophic mob?- The dependence of 
health on activity is always kept very loose, it may 
be for the convenience of shutting our mouths against 

and responds to the commonest stimulants, so that enjoyment cannot 
be quashed without unusually unfavourable circumstances. The first 
kind is widely diffused ; the second is very rare, except in the earlier 
portion of life. Most men and women, as they pass middle age, lose the 
elasticity required for easy and spontaneous enjoyment, and, even if 
they keep the appearance of health, have too little animal spirits for 
enjoyment under cheap and ordinary excitements. 

But there is more to be said. In order to obtain, and to retain, health, 
freedom from debt, and a good conscience, there are pre-supposed 
very considerable advantages. We cannot continue healthy and out 
of debt, unless we have a fair start in life, that is, unless we have a 
tolerable provision to begin with ; a circumstance that the maxim 
keeps out of sight. 

Yet farther. The conditions named are of themselves mere nega- 
tives ; they imply simply the absence of certain decided causes of 
unhappiness — ill-health, poverty, and bad conduct. There is a farther 
stealthy assumption, namely, that the individual is placed in a situation 
otherwise conducive to happiness. Health, absence of debt, and a 
good conscience will not make happiness, under severe or ungenial toil, 
irritation, ill-usage, affliction, sorrow, — even if they could be long 
maintained under such circumstances. Nor even, in the case of 
exemption from the worst ills of life, can we be happy without some 
positive agreeables — family, general society, amusements, and gratifi- 
cations. There is a certain degree of loneliness, seclusion, dulness, that 
destroys happiness without sapping health, or running us into debt and 
vice. 

The maxim, as expressed, professes to aim at happiness, but it more 
properly belongs to duty. If we fail in the conditions mentioned, we 
run the risk rather of neglecting our duties than of missing our plea- 
sures. It is not every form of ill-health that makes us miserable ; and 
we may become seared to debt and ill-conduct, so as to suffer only the 
incidental miseiy of being dunned, which many can take, with great 
composure. 

The definition of happiness by Paley is vague and incomplete ; but 
it does not omit the positive conditions. After health, Paley enumer- 



SOCIOLOGY. 153 

complaints of being overworked. To render this 
dependence precise is a matter of pure psychology. 

Before coming to Ethics I must, as a preparation, 
view another derivative branch of psychology, the old 
subject of politics and society, under its new name, 
SOCIOLOGY. It is obvious that all terms used in 
describing social facts and their generalities are terms 
of mind : command and obedience, law and right, 
order and progress, are notions made up of human 
feelings, purposes, and thoughts. 

Sociology is usually studied in its own special field, 
and nowhere else ; that is to say, the sociologist 
employs himself in observing and comparing the 
operations of societies under all varieties of circum- 
stances, and in all historic ages. The field is essen- 
tially human nature, and the laws arrived at are laws 
of human nature. A consummate sociologist is not 
often to be found ; the really great theorists in society 
could be counted on one's fingers. Some of them 
have been psychologists as well ; I need mention only 
Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, the Mills. Others 
as Vico, Montesquieu, Millar, Condorcet, Auguste 
Comte, De Tocqueville, have not independently 
studied the mind on the broad psychological basis. 
Now the bearings on sociology of a pure psychological 

ates the exercise of the affections and some engaging occupation or 
pursuit ; both which are highly relevant to the attainment of happiness. 
Indeed, with an exemption from cares, and a considerable share of the 
positive gratifications, we can enjoy life on a very slender stock of 
health ; otherwise, where should we be in the inevitable decline that 
age brings with it ? 



154 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

preparation can be convincingly shown. The laws of 
society, if not the merest empiricisms, are derivative 
laws of the mind ; hence a theorist cannot be trusted 
with the handling of a derivative law, unless he knows, 
as well as can be known, the simple or constituent 
laws. All the elements of human character crop up 
in men's social relations ; in the foreground are their 
self-interest or sense of self-preservation, together with 
their social and anti-social promptings ; a little farther 
back are their active energy, their intelligence, their 
artistic feelings, and their religious susceptibilities. 
Now all these should be broadly examined as elements 
of the mind, without an immediate reference to the 
political machine. Of course, the social feelings need 
a social situation, and cannot be studied without that ; 
but there are many social situations that give scope 
for examining them, besides what is contemplated in 
political society ; and the psychologist proper ought 
to avail himself of all the opportunities of rendering 
the statement of these various elements precise. For 
this purpose, his chief aim is the ultimate analysis of 
the various faculties and feelings. This analysis no- 
body but himself cares to institute ; and yet a know- 
ledge of the ultimate constitution of an emotional 
tendency is one of the best aids in appreciating its 
mode of working. Without a good preliminary 
analysis of the social and anti-social emotions, for 
example, you are almost sure to be counting the same 
thing twice over, or else confounding two different 
facts under one designation. On the one hand, 
the precise relationship of the states named love, 






SOCIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS. 1 55 

sympathy, disinterestedness ; and, on the other hand, 
the common basis of domination, resentment, pride, 
egotism, — should be distinctly cleared up, as is possible 
only in psychological study strictly so called. The 
workings of the religious sentiment cannot be shown 
sociologically, without a previous analysis of the con- 
stituent emotions. 

An allusion so very slender to so vast a subject as 
sociology would be a waste of words, but for the 
conviction, that through sociology is the way to the 
great field of Ethics. This is to reverse the traditional 
arrangement — ethics, politics, or government — fol- 
lowed even by Bentham. The lights of ethics are, in 
the first instance, psychological ; its discussions pre- 
suppose a number of definitions and distinctions that 
are pure psychology. But before these have to be 
adduced, the subject has to be set forth as a problem 
of sociology. " How is the King's government to be 
carried on ? " " How is society to be held together ? " 
is the first consideration ; and the sociologist — as 
constitution-builder, administrator, judge — is the per- 
son to grapple with the problem. It is with him that 
law, obligation, right, command, obedience, sanction, 
have their origin and their explanation. Ethics is an 
important supplement to social or political law. But 
it is still a department of law. In any other view it 
is a maze, a mystery, a hopeless embroilment. 

That ethics is involved in society is of course 
admitted ; what is not admitted is, that ethical terms 
should be settled under the social science in the first 
place. I may refer to the leading term " law," whose 



156 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

meaning in sociology is remarkably clear ; in ethics 
remarkably the reverse. The confusion deepens 
when the moral faculty is brought forward. In the 
eye of the sociologist, nothing could be simpler than 
the conception of that part of our nature that is 
appealed to for securing obedience. He assumes a 
certain effort of the intelligence for understanding the 
signification of a command or a law ; and, for the 
motive part, he counts upon nothing but volition in 
its most ordinary form — the avoidance of a pain. 
Intelligence and Will, in their usual and recognised 
workings, are all that are required for social obedi- 
ence; law is conceived and framed exactly to suit the 
every -day and every -hour manifestations of these 
powers. The lawgiver does not speak of an obedience- 
faculty, nor even of a social-faculty. If there were in 
the mind a power unique and apart, having nothing 
in common with our usual intelligence, and nothing 
in common with our usual will or volition, that 
power ought to be expressed in terms that ex- 
clude the smallest participation of both know- 
ledge and will ; it ought to have a form special 
to itself, and not the form : — " Do this, and ye shall 
be made to suffer " 

I am quite aware that there are elements in ethics 
not included in the problem of social obedience ; 
what I contend for is, that the ground should be 
cleared by marking out the two provinces, as is 
actually done by a very small number of theorists, of 
whom John Austin is about the best example. 

The ethical philosopher, from not building on a 



PRECEPTS OF ETHICS MAINLY SOCIAL. 157 

foregone sociology, is obliged to extemporize, in a 
paragraph, the social system ; just as the physical 
philosopher would, if he had no regularly constructed 
mathematics to fall back upon, but had to stop every 
now and then to enunciate a mathematical theorem. 

The question of the ethical end should first appear 
as the question of the sociological end. For what 
purpose or purposes is society maintained ? All the 
ethical difficulties are here met by anticipation, and 
in a form much better adapted to their solution. It 
is from the point of view of the social ruler, that you 
learn reserve, moderation, and sobriety in your aims ; 
you learn to think that something much less than the 
Utopias — universal happiness and universal virtue — 
should be propounded ; you find that a definite and 
limited province can be assigned, separating what the 
social power is able to do, must do, and can advan- 
tageously do, from what it is unable to do, need not 
do, and cannot with advantage do ; and this or a 
similar demarcation is reproducible in ethics. 

The precepts of ethics are mainly the precepts of 
social authority ; at all events the social precepts and 
their sanctions have the priority in scientific method. 
Some of the highest virtues are sociological ; patriotic 
self-sacrifice is one of the conditions of social preser- 
vation. The inculcation of this and of many other 
virtues would not appear in ethics at all, or only in a 
supplementary treatment, if social science took its 
proper sphere, and fully occupied that sphere. 

Once more. The great problem of moral control, 
which I would remove entirely from a science of 



158 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

education, would be first dealt with in Sociology. It 
there appears in the form of the choice and gradation 
of punishments, in prison discipline, and in the refor- 
mation of criminals, — all which have been made the 
subject of enlightened, not to say scientific, treatment. 
It is in the best experience in those subjects that I 
would begin to seek for lights on the comprehensive 
question. I would next go to diplomacy for the arts 
of delicate address in reconciling opposing interests ; 
after which I would look to the management of parties 
and conflicting interests in the State. I would farther 
inquire how armies are disciplined, and subordination 
combined with the enthusiasm that leads to noble 
deeds. 

There is an abundant field for the application of 
pure psychology to ethics, when it takes its own 
proper ground. The exact psychological character of 
disinterested impulse needs to be assigned ; and, if 
that impulse can be fully referred to the sympathetic 
or social instincts, and habits, the supposed moral 
faculty is finally eviscerated of its contents for all 
ethical purposes. 

So far I have exemplified what seems to me real 
or genuine aims and applications of metaphysical 
study. I now proceed to the objects that are more or 
less factitious. We are here on delicate ground, and 
run the risk of discrediting our pursuit, as regards the 
very things that in the eyes, of many people make its 
value. 

First, then, as psychology involves all our sensi- 



man's relations to the infinite. 159 

bilities, pleasures, affections, aspirations, capacities, it 
is thought on that ground to have a special nobility 
and greatness, and a special power of evoking in the 
student the feelings themselves. The mathematician, 
dealing with conic sections, spirals, and differential 
equations, is in danger of being ultimately resolved 
into a function or a co-efficient; the metaphysician, by 
investigating conscience, must become conscientious ; 
driving fat oxen is the way to grow fat. 

But to pass to a far graver application. It has 
usually been supposed that metaphysical theory is 
more especially akin to the speculation that mounts 
to the supernatural and the transcendental world. 
" Man's relations to the infinite " is a frequent phrase 
in the mouth of the metaphysician. Metaphysics is 
supposed to be " philosophy " by way of eminence ; 
and philosophy in the large sense has not merely to 
satisfy the curiosity of the human mind, it has to 
provide scope for its emotions and aspirations ; in 
fact, to play the part of theology. In times when the 
prevailing orthodox beliefs are shaken, some scheme of 
philosophy is brought forward to take their place. If 
I understand aright the drift of the German meta- 
physical systems for a century back, they all more or 
less propose to themselves to supply the same 
spiritual wants as religion supplies. In our own 
country, such of us as are not under German influence 
put the matter differently ; but we still consider that 
we have something to say on the "highest questions". 
We are apt to believe that on us more than on any 
other class of thinkers, does it depend whether the 



l6o METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

prevailing theology shall be upheld, impugned, or 
transformed. The chief weapons of the defenders of 
the faith are forged in the schools of metaphysics. 
Locke and Butler, Reid, Stewart and Brown are 
theological authorities. And when theology is at- 
tacked, its metaphysical buttresses have to be assailed 
as the very first thing. If these are declared unsound, 
either it must fall, or it must change its front. It is 
Natural Theology, more particularly, that is thus 
allied to metaphysics ; yet, not exclusively ; for the 
defence of Revelation by miracles involves at the 
outset a point of logic. 

Now I do not mean to say, that this is a purely 
factitious and ill-grounded employment of the meta- 
physical sciences. I fully admit that the later de- 
fences of theology, as well as the attacks, have been 
furnished from psychology, logic, ethics, and ontology. 
The earliest beliefs in religion, the greatest and 
strongest convictions, had little to do with any of 
these departments of speculation. But when simple 
traditionary faith gave place to the questionings of 
the reason, the basis of religion was transferred to the 
reason-built sciences ; and metaphysics came in for a 
large share in the decision. 

What I maintain is, that there is something fac- 
titious in the degree of prominence given to meta- 
physics in this great enterprise ; that its pretentions 
are excessive, its importance over-stated ; and when 
most employed for such a purpose, it is least to be 
trusted. Theological polemic is only in part con- 
ducted through science ; and physical science shares 



METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY. l6l 

equally with moral. The most serious shocks to the 
traditional orthodoxy have come from the physical 
sciences. The argument from Design has no doubt 
a metaphysical or logical element — the estimate 
of the degree of analogy between the universe 
and a piece of human workmanship ; but the argu- 
ment itself needs a scientific survey of the entire 
phenomena of nature, both matter and mind. Our 
Bridgewater Treatises proceeded upon this view ; 
they embraced the consideration of the whole circle 
of the sciences, as bearing on the theological argu- 
ment. The scheme was so far just and to the pur- 
pose ; the obvious drawback to the value of the 
Treatises lay in their being special pleadings, backed 
by a fee of a thousand pounds to each writer for 
maintaining one side. If a similar fee had been given 
to nine equally able writers to represent the other side, 
the argument from design would have been far more 
satisfactorily sifted than by the exclusively meta- 
physical criticism of Kant 

When theology is supported exclusively by such 
doctrines as — an independent and immaterial soul, a 
special moral faculty, and what is called free-will, — 
the metaphysician is a person of importance in the 
contest ; he is powerful either to uphold or to subvert 
the fabric. But, if these were ever to constitute the 
chief stronghold of the faith, its tenure would not be 
very secure. It is only a metaphysician, however, 
that believes or disbelieves in metaphysical grounds 
alone ; such a man as Cousin, no doubt, rests his 
whole spiritual philosophy on this foundation. But 



1 62 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

the great mass will either adhere to religion in spite 
of metaphysical difficulties, or else abandon it not- 
withstanding its metaphysical evidences. An eminent 
man now departed said in my hearing, that he was a 
believer in Christianity until he became acquainted 
with geology, when, finding the first chapter of Gene- 
sis at variance with geological doctrines, he applied 
to the Bible the rule falsus in uno,falsus in omnibus, 
and thenceforth abandoned his old belief. I never 
heard of any one that was so worked upon by a 
purely metaphysical argument. 

The aspect of theological doctrine that has come 
most to the front of late is the question of the Divine 
goodness, as shown in the plan of the universe. 
Speculations are divided between optimism and 
pessimism. How shall we decide between these 
extremes, or, if repudiating both, how shall we fix 
the mean ? Is a metaphysician more especially 
qualified to find out the truth ? I hardly think so. I 
believe he could contribute, with others, to such a 
solution as may be possible. He has, we shall sup- 
pose, surveyed closely the compass of the human 
sensibilities, and is able to assign, with more than 
common precision, what things operate on them 
favourably or unfavourably. So far good. Then, as 
a logician, he is more expert at detecting bad in- 
ferences in regard to the form of reasoning ; but 
whether certain allegations of fact are well or ill 
founded, he may not be able to say, at least out of 
his own department. If a mixed commission of 
ten were nominated to adjudicate upon this vast 



FILLING THE THEOLOGICAL VOID. 163 

problem, metaphysics might claim to be represented 
by two. 

Least of all, do I understand the claims made in 
behalf of this department to supply the spiritual void 
in case the old theology is no longer accredited. 
When one looks closely at the stream and tendency 
of thought, one sees a growing alliance and kinship 
between religion and poetry or art. There is, as we 
know, a dogmatic, precise, severe, logical side of 
theology, by which creeds are constructed, religious 
tests imposed, and belief made a matter of legal 
compulsion. There is also a sentimental, ideal, 
imaginative side that resists definition, that refuses 
dogmatic prescription, and seeks only to satisfy 
spiritual needs and emotions. Metaphysics may no 
doubt take a part in the dogmatic or doctrinal treat- 
ment, but it must qualify itself by biblical study, and 
become altogether theology. In the other aspect, 
metaphysics, as I conceive it, is unavailing ; the poet 
is the proper medium for keeping up the emotional 
side, under -all transformations of doctrinal belief. 
But as conceived by others, metaphysics is philosophy 
and poetiy in one, to which I can never agree. The 
combination of the two, as hitherto exhibited, has 
been made at the expense of both. The leading 
terms of philosophy — reason, spirit, soul, the ideal, 
the infinite, the absolute, phenomenal truth, being, 
consciousness — are lubricated with emotion, and 
thrown together in ways that defy the understanding. 
The unintelligible, which ought to be the shame of 
philosophy, is made its glory. 



164 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

These remarks prepare for the conclusion that I 
arrive at as to the scope of metaphysics with reference 
to the higher questions. That it has bearings upon 
these questions I allow ; and those bearings are legi- 
timately within the range of metaphysical debates. 
But I make a wide distinction between metaphysical 
discussion and theological discussion ; and do not 
consider that they can be combined to advantage. In 
the great latitude of free inquiry in the present day, 
theology is freely canvassed, and societies might be 
properly devoted to that express object ; but I cannot 
see any benefit that would arise by a philosophical 
society undertaking, in addition to its own province, 
to raise the questions belonging to theology. I am 
well aware that there is one society of very dis- 
tinguished persons in the metropolis, calling itself 
metaphysical, that freely ventures upon the perilous 
seas of theological debate. 1 No doubt good comes 
from any exercise of the liberty of discussion, so long 
restrained in this region ; yet, I can hardly suppose 
that purely metaphysical studies can thrive in such a 
connection. Many of the members must think far 
more of the theological issues than of the cultivation 
of mental and logical science ; and a purely meta- 
physical debate can seldom be pursued with profit 
under these conditions. 

I now pass to the Polemical handling of the 
metaphysical subjects. We owe to the Greeks the 
study of philosophy through methodised debate ; and 
1 This Society has since been dissolved. 



POLEMICS IN GREECE. 1 65 

the state of scientific knowledge in the age of the 
early Athenian schools was favourable to that mode 
of treatment. The conversations of Socrates, the Dia- 
logues of Plato, and the Topics of Aristotle, are the 
monuments of Greek contentiousness, turned to 
account as a great refinement in social intercourse, as 
a stimulus to individual thought, and a means of 
advancing at least the speculative departments of 
knowledge. Grote, both in his "Plato," and in his 
" Aristotle," while copiously illustrating all these con- 
sequences, has laid extraordinary stress on still 
another aspect of the polemic of Socrates and Plato, 
the aspect of free)- thought, as against venerated 
tradition and the received commonplaces of society. 
The assertion of the right of private judgment in 
matters of doctrine and belief, was, according to 
Grote, the greatest of all the fruits of the systematised 
negation begun by Zeno, and carried out in the 
" Search Dialogues " of Plato. In the " Exposition 
Dialogues " it is wanting ; and in the "Topica," where 
Eristic is reduced to method and system by one of 
Aristotle's greatest logical achievements, the free- 
thinker's wings are very much dipt ; the execution of 
Socrates probably had to answer for that. It is to 
the Platonic dialogues that we look for the full 
grandeur of Grecian debate in all its phases. The 
Plato of Grote is the apotheosis of Negation ; it is 
not a philosophy so much as an epic; the theme — 
" The Noble Wrath of the Greek Dissenter ". 

At all times, there is much that has to be achieved 
by solitary thinking. Some definite shape must be 



1 66 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

given to our thoughts before we can submit them to 
the operation of other minds ; the greater the origi- 
nality, the longer must be the process of solitary- 
elaboration. The " Principia " was composed from 
first to last by recluse meditation ; probably the 
attempt to discuss or debate any parts of it would 
have only fretted and paralysed the author's inven- 
tion. Indeed, after an enormous strain of the con- 
structive intellect, a man may be in no humour to 
have his work carped at, even to improve it. In the 
region of fact, in observation and experiment, there 
must be a mass of individual and unassisted exertion. 
The use of allies in this region is to check and' confirm 
the accuracy of the first observer. 

Again, an inquirer, by dint of prolonged familiarity 
with a subject, may be his own best critic ; he may 
be better able to detect flaws than any one he could 
call in. This is another way of stating the superiority 
of a particular individual over all others in the same 
walk. Such a monarchical position as removes a 
man alike from the rivalry and from the sympathy 
of his fellows, is the exception ; mutual criticism 
and mutual encouragement are the rule. The social 
stimulants are of avail in knowledge and in truth as 
well as everything else. 

A comparison of the state cf speculation in the 
golden age of debate, with the state of the sciences in 
the present day, both metaphysical and physical, 
shows us clearly enough, what are the fields where 
polemic is most profitable. I set aside the struggles 
of politics and theology, and look to the scientific 



MOST USEFUL CLASSES OF DEBATES. 167 

form of knowledge, which is, after all, the type of our 
highest certainty everywhere. Now, undoubtedly, it 
is in classifying, generalising, defining, and in the so- 
called logical processes — induction and deduction — 
that a man can be least left to himself. Until many 
men have gone over the same field of facts, a classifica- 
tion, a definition, or an induction, cannot be held as safe 
and sound. In modern science, there are numerous 
matters that have passed through the fiery furnace of 
iterated criticism, seven times purified ; but there are, 
attaching to every science, a number of things still in 
the furnace. Most of all does this apply to the 
metaphysical or subject sciences, where, according 
to the popular belief, nothing has yet passed finally 
out of the fiery trial. In psychology, in logic, in 
eudaemonics, in sociology, in ethics, the facts are 
nearly all around our feet ; the question is how to 
classify, define, generalise, express them. This 
was the situation of Zeno, Socrates, and Plato, for 
which they invoked the militant ardour of the mind. 
Man, they saw, is a fighting being ; if fighting will do 
a thing, he will do it well. 

In conformity with this view, the foremost class of 
debates, and certainly not the least profitable, are 
such as discuss the meanings of important terms. 
The genius of Socrates perceived that this was the 
beginning of all valid knowledge, and, in seeing this, 
laid the foundation of reasoned truth. I need not 
repeat the leading terms of metaphysical philosophy ; 
but you can at once understand the form of pro- 
ceeding by such an instance as "consciousness," de- 



1 68 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

bated so as to bring out the question whether, as 
Hamilton supposed, it is necessarily grounded on 
knowledge. 

Next to the leading terms are the broader and more 
fundamental generalities : for example, the law of 
relativity ; the laws of memory and its conditions, 
such as the intensity of the present consciousness ; 
Hamilton's inverse relationship of sensation and 
perception. These are a few psychological instances. 
The value of a debate on any of these questions 
depends entirely upon its resolving itself into an 
inductive survey of the facts, and such surveys are 
never without fruit. 

A debating society that includes logic in its sphere 
should cultivate the methods of debate ; setting an 
example to other societies and to mankind in general. 
The "Topica" of Aristotle shows an immensity of 
power expended on this object, doubtless without 
corresponding results. Nevertheless the attempt, it 
resumed at the present day, with our clearer and 
wider views of logical method, would not be barren. 
This is too little thought of by us ; and we may 
say that polemic, as an art, is still immature. The 
best examples of procedure are to be found in the 
Law Courts, some of whose methods might be bor- 
rowed in other debates. For one thing, I think that 
each of the two leaders should provide the members 
beforehand with a synopsis of the leading arguments 
or positions to be set forth in the debate. This, I 
believe, should be insisted on everywhere, not even 
excepting the debates of Parliament. 



THE DEBATE A FIGHT FOR MASTERY. 1 69 

It is the custom of debating societies to alternate 
the Debate and the Essay : a very important distinc- 
tion, as it seems to me ; and I will endeavour to 
indicate how it should be maintained. Frequently 
there is no substantial distinction observed ; an essay 
is simply the opening of a debate, and a debate the 
criticism of an essay. I should like t© see the two 
carried out each on its own principle, as I shall now 
endeavour to explain. 

The Debate is the figlit for mastery as between two 
sides. The combatants strain their powers to say 
everything that can be said so as to shake the case of 
their opponents. The debate is a field-day, a chal- 
lenge to a trial of strength. Now, while I admit that 
the intellectual powers may be quickened to unusual 
perspicacity under the sound of the trumpet and the 
shock ©f arms, I also see in the operation many perils 
and shortcomings, when the subject of contest is 
truth. In a heated controversy, only the more glaring 
and prominent facts, considerations, doctrines, dis- 
tinctions, can obtain a footing. Now truth is the 
still small voice ; it subsists often upon delicate 
differences, unobtrusive instances, fine calculations. 
Whether or not man is a wholly selfish being, may be 
submitted to a contentious debate, because the facts 
and appearances on both sides are broad and pal- 
pable ; but whether all our actions are, in the last 
resort or final analysis, self-regarding, is almost too 
delicate for debate. Chalmers upholds, as a thesis, 
the intrinsic misery of the vicious affections : there 
could not be a finer topic of pure debate. 



170 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

My conception of the Essay, on the other hand, is 
that it should represent amicable co-operation, with an 
eye to the truth. By it you should rise from the lower 
or competitive, to the higher or communistic, attitude. 
There may be a loss of energy, but there is a gain 
in the manner of applying it. The essayist should 
set himself to ascertain the truth upon a subject ; he 
should not be anxious to make a case. The listeners, 
in the same spirit, should welcome all his suggestions, 
help him out where he is in difficulties, be indulgent 
to his failings, endeavour to see good in everything. 
If there be a real occasion for debate, it should be 
purposely forborne and reserved. In propounding 
subjects, the respective fitness for the debate and for 
the essay might be taken into account. 

When questions have been often debated without 
coming nearer to a conclusion, it should be regarded 
as a sign that they are too delicate and subtle for 
debate. A trial should then be made of the amicable 
or co-operative treatment represented by the Essay. 
The Freedom of the Will might, I think, be adjusted 
by friendly accommodation, but not by force of con- 
tention. External Perception is beyond tl e pro- 
vince of debate. It is fair and legitimate to try all 
problems by debate, in the first instance, because the 
excitement quickens the intelligence, and leads to 
new suggestions ; but if the question involves an 
adjustment of various considerations and minute 
differences, the contending sides will te contentious 
still. 

A society that really aims at the furtherance of 



CO-OPERATIVE DISCUSSION BY THE ESSAY. 171 

knowledge, might test its operations by now and then 
preparing a report of progress ; setting forth what 
problems had been debated, what themes elucidated, 
and with what results. It would be very refreshing 
to see a candid avowal that after several attempts — 
both debate and essay — some leading topic of the 
department remained exactly where it stood at the 
outset. After such a confession, the Society might 
well resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole 
House, to consider its ways, and indeed its entire 
position, with a view to a new start on some more 
hopeful tack. 

My closing remark is, as to avoiding debates that 
are in their very nature interminable. It is easy to 
fix upon a few salient features that make all the 
difference between a hopeful and a hopeless contro- 
versy. For one thing, there is a certain intensity of 
emotion, interest, bias, or prejudice if you will, that 
can neither reason nor be reasoned with. On the 
purely intellectual side, the disqualifying circum- 
stances are complexity and vagueness. If a topic 
necessarily hauls in numerous other topics of difficulty, 
the essay may do something for it, but not the debate. 
Worst of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, 
or unsettled terms, of which there are still plenty in 
our department. A not unfrequent case is a combi- 
nation of the several defects each perhaps in a small 
degree. A tinge of predilection or party, a double or 
triple complication of doctrines, and one or two hazy 
terms, will make a debate that is pretty sure to end 
as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to 



172 METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES. 

appearance, may contain within it capacities of mis- 
understanding, cross-purposes, and pointless issues, 
sufficient to occupy the long night of Pandemonium, 
or beguile the journey to the nearest fixed star. 



VL 

THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL— PAST AND PRESENT 



THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL— PAST AND 
PRESENT.* 

Gentlemen, 

By your flattering estimate of my ser- 
vices, I have been unexpectedly summoned from 
retirement, to assume the honours and the duties 
of the purple, and to occupy the most historically 
important office in the Universities of Europe. 

The present demands upon the Rectorship some- 
what resemble what we are told of the Homeric chief, 
who, in company with his Council or Senate, the 
Boule, and the Popular Assembly, or Agora, made up 
the political constitution of the tribe. The functions 
of the chief, it is said, were to supply wise counsel to 
the Boule (as we might call our Court), and unctuous 
eloquence to the Agora. The second of these re- 
quirements is what weighs upon me at the present 
moment. 

Whatever may have been the practice of my pre- 
decessors, generally strangers to you, it would be 
altogether unbecoming in me to travel out of our 
University life, for the materials of an Address. My 
remarks then will principally bear on the UNIVER- 
SITY Ideal. 

•Rectorial Address, to the Students of Aberdeen University, 
I j/4 November, 1882. 



176 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 



THE HIGHER TEACHING IN GREECE. 

To the Greeks we are indebted for the earliest 
germ of the University. It was with them chiefly 
that education took that great leap, the greatest ever 
made, from the traditional teaching of the home, the 
shop, the social surroundings, to schoolmaster teach- 
ing properly so called. Nowadays, we, schoolmasters, 
think so much of ourselves, that we do not make full 
allowance for that other teaching, which was, for un- 
known ages, the only teaching of mankind. The 
Greeks were the first to introduce, not perhaps the 
primary schoolmaster, for the R's, but certainly the 
secondary or higher schoolmaster, known as Rhetori- 
cian or Sophist, who taught the higher professions ; 
while their Philosophers or wise men, introduced a 
kind of knowledge that gave scope to the intellectual 
faculties, with or without professional applications ; 
the very idea of our Faculty of Arts. 

So self-asserting were these new-born teachers of 
the Sophist class, that Plato thought it necessary to 
recall attention to the good old perennial source of 
instruction, the home, the trade, and the society. He 
pointed out that the pretenders to teach virtue by 
moral lecturing, were as yet completely outrivalled 
by the influence of the family and the social pressure 
of the community. In like manner, the arts of life 
were all originally handed down by apprenticeship 
and imitation. The greatest statesmen and generals 
of early times had simply the education of the actual 



LOGIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 77 

work. Philip of Macedon could have had no other 
teaching ; his greater son was the first of the line to 
receive what we may call a liberal, or a general 
education, under the educator of all Europe. 



THE MIDDLE AGE AND BOETHIUS. 

I must skip eight centuries, to introduce the man 
that linked the ancient and the modern world, and 
was almost the sole luminary in the west during the 
dark ages, namely, Boethius, minister of the Gothic 
Emperor Theodoric. As much of Aristotle as was 
known between the 6th and the nth centuries was 
handed down by him. During that time, only the 
logical treatises existed among the Latins ; and of 
these the best parts were neglected. Historical im- 
portance attaches to a small circle of them known as 
the Old Logic {veins logica), which were the pabulum 
of abstract thought for five dreary centuries. These 
consisted of the two treatises or chapters of Aristotle 
called the " Categories," and the " De Interpretatione," 
or the Theory of Propositions ; and of a book of 
Porphyry the Neo-Platonist, entitled ' Introduction ' 
{Tsagoge), and treating of the so-called Five Predi- 
cables. A hundred average pages would include them 
all ; and three weeks would suffice to master them. 

Boethius, however, did much more than hand on 
these works to the mediaeval students ; he translated 
the whole of Aristotle's logical writings (the Organon), 
but the others were seldom taken up. It was he too 
that handled the question of Universals in his first 



178 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

Dialogue on Porphyry, and sowed the seed that was 
not to germinate till four centuries afterwards, but 
which, when the time came, was to bear fruit in no 
measured amount. And Boethius is the name asso- 
ciated with the scheme of higher education that pre- 
ceded the University teaching, called the quadrivium> 
or quadruple group of subjects, namely, Arithmetic, 
Geometry, Music and Astronomy This, together 
with the trivium, or preparatory group of three sub- 
jects — Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic — constituted 
what was known as the seven liberal arts ; but, in the 
darkest ages, the quadrivium was almost lost sight of, 
and few went beyond the trivium. 

EVE OF THE UNIVERSITY. 

In the 7th century, the era of deepest intellectual 
gloom, philosophy was at an entire stand-still. Light 
arises with the 8th, when we are introduced to the 
Cathedral and Cloister Schools of Charlemagne ; and 
the 9th saw these schools fully established, and an 
educational reform completed that was to be produc- 
tive of lasting good results. But the range of instruc- 
tion was still narrow, scarcely proceeding beyond the 
Old Logic, and the teachers were, as formerly, the 
Monks. The nth century is really the period of 
dawn. The East was now opened up through the 
Crusades, and there was frequent intercourse with 
the learned Saracens of Spain ; and thus there were 
brought into the West the whole of Aristotle's works, 
with Arabic commentaries, chiefly in Latin transla- 



TWO CLASSES OF MEDIAEVAL CHURCHMEN. 1 79 

tions. The effervescence was prodigious and alarm- 
ing. The schools were reinforced by a higher class 
of teachers, Lay as well as Clerical ; a marked ad- 
vance was made in Logic and Dialectic ; and the 
great controversy of Realism versus Nominalism, 
which had found its birth in the previous century, 
raged with extraordinary vigour. We are now on 
the eve of the founding of the Universities ; Boogna, 
indeed, being already in existence. 

SEPARATION OF PHILOSOPHY FROM THEOLOGY. 

The University proper, however, can hardly be 
dated earlier than the 12th century; and the impor- 
tant particulars in its first constitution are these : — 

First, the separation of Philosophy from Theology. 
To expound this, would be to give a chapter of 
mediaeval history. Suffice it to say that Aristotle and 
the awakening intellect of the nth century were the 
main causes of it. Two classes ot minds at this time 
divided the Church — the pious, devout believers (such 
as St. Bernard), who needed no reasons for their faith, 
and the polemic speculative divines (such as Abae- 
lard), who wished to make Theology rational. It 
was an age, too, of stirring political events ; the 
crusading spirit was abroad, and found a certain grati- 
fication even in the war of words. The nature of 
Universals was eagerly debated ; but when this con- 
troversy came into collision with such leading theo- 
logical doctrines as the Trinity and Predestination, 
it was no longer possible for Philosophy and Theo- 
logy to remain conjoined. 



180 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

A separation was effected, and determined the 
leading feature of the University system. The foun- 
dation was Philosophy, and the fundamental Faculty 
the Faculty of Arts. Bologna, indeed, was eminent 
for Law or Jurisprudence, and this celebrity it retained 
for ages ; but the University of Paris, which is the 
prototype of our Scottish Universities, as of so many 
others, taught nothing but Philosophy — in other 
words, had no Faculty but Arts — for many years. 
Neither Theology, Medicine, nor Law had existence 
there till the 13th century. 

Second, the system of conferring Degrees, after 
appropriate trials. These were at first simply a 
licence to teach. They acquired their commanding 
importance through the action of Pope Nicholas I., 
who gave to the graduates of the University of Paris, 
the power of teaching everywhere, a power that our 
own countrymen were the foremost to turn to 
account. 

THE OFFICE OF RECTOR. 

Third, the Organisation of the primitive Univer- 
sity. Europe was unsettled ; even in the capitals, the 
civil power was often unhinged. Wherever multi- 
tudes came together, there was manifested a spirit of 
turbulence. The Universities often exemplified this 
fact ; and it was found necessary to establish a 
government within themselves. The basis was popu- 
lar ; but, while, in Paris, only the teaching body was 
incorporated, in Bologna, the students had a voice. 
They elected the Rector, and his jurisdiction was very 



SCOTCHMEN ABROAD. l8l 

great indeed, and much more important than speechi- 
fying to his constituents. His Court had the power 
of internal regulation, with both a civil and criminal 
jurisdiction. The Scotch Universities, on this point, 
followed Bologna ; and that fact is the remote cause 
of this day's meeting. 

THE UNIVERSITIES OF SCOTLAND FOUNDED. 

So started the University. The idea took ; and in 
three centuries, many of the leading towns in Italy, 
France, the German Empire, had their Universities; 
in England arose Oxford and Cambridge; the model 
was Paris or Bologna. 

Scotland did not at first enter the race of Univer- 
sity-founding, but worked on the plan of the cuckoo, 
by laying its eggs in the nests of others. For two 
centuries, Scotchmen were almost shut out of Eng- 
land ; and so could not make for themselves a career 
in Oxford and Cambridge, as in later times. They 
had, however, at home, good grammar schools, where 
they were grounded in Latin. They perambulated 
Europe, and were familiar figures in the great Uni- 
versity towns, and especially Paris. From their dis- 
putatious and metaphysical aptitude, they worked 
their upward way — 

And gladly would they learn and gladly teach. 

At length, the nation did take up the work in good 
earnest. In 141 1, was founded the first of the St. 
Andrews' Colleges; 145 1 is the date of Glasgow; 
1494, King's College, Aberdeen. These are the pre- 



l82 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

Reformation colleges ; but for the Reformation, we 
might not have had any other. Their founders were 
ecclesiastics ; their constitution and ceremonial were 
ecclesiastical. They were intended, no doubt, to keep 
the Scotch students at home. They were also ex- 
pected to serve as bulwarks to the Church against the 
rising heretics of the times. In this they were a dis- 
appointment; the first- begotten of them became the 
cradle of the Reformation. 

In these our three eldest foundations, we are to seek 
the primitive constitution and the teaching system of 
our Universities. In essentials, they were the same ; 
only between the dates of Glasgow and Old Aber- 
deen occurred two great events. One was the taking 
of Constantinople, which spread the Greek scholars 
with their treasures over Europe. The other was the 
progress of printing. In 145 1, when Glasgow com- 
menced, there was no printed text-book. In 1494, 
when King's College began, the ancient classics had 
been largely printed ; the early editions of Aristotle in 
our Library, show the date of i486. 

FIRST PERIOD — THE TEACHING BODY. 

Our Universities have three well-marked periods ; 
the first anterior to the Reformation ; the second from 
the Reformation to the beginning of last century; the 
third, the last and present centuries. Confining our- 
selves still to the Faculty of Arts, the features of the 
Pre- Reformation University were these : — 

First, as regards the teaching Body. The quad- 
nennial Arts' course was conducted by so-called 



ARISTOTLE THE BASIS OF THE TEACHING. 1 83 

Regents, who each carried the same students through 
all the four years, thus taking upon himself the burden 
of all the sciences — a walking Encyclopaedia. The 
system was in full force, in spite of attempts to change 
it, during both the first and the second periods. You, 
the students of Arts, at the present day, encountering 
in your four years, seven faces, seven voices, seven 
repositories of knowledge, need an effort to under- 
stand how your predecessors could be cheerful and 
happy, confined all through to one personality; some- 
times juvenile, sometimes senile, often feeble at his 
best 

THE SUBJECTS TAUGHT. 

Next, as regards the Subjects taught. To know 
these you have simply to know what are the writings 
of Aristotle. The little work on him by Sir Alex- 
ander Grant supplies the needful information. The 
records of the Glasgow University furnish the curri- 
culum of Arts soon after its foundation. The sub- 
jects are laid out in two heads — Logic and Philosophy 
The Logic comprised first the three Treatises of the 
Old Logic ; to these were now added the whole of 
the works making up Aristotle's Organon. This 
brought in the Syllogism, and allied matters. There 
was also a selection from the work known as the 
Topics, not now included in Logical teaching, yet one 
of the most remarkable and distinctive of Aristotle's 
writings. It is a highly laboured account of the whole 
art of Disputation, laid out under his scheme of the 
Predicables. The selection fell chiefly on two books 



1 84 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

— the second, comprising what Aristotle had to say- 
on Induction, and the sixth, on Definition ; together 
with the " Logical Captions " or Fallacies. Disputa- 
tion was one of the products of the Greek mind ; and 
Aristotle was its prophet. 

Now for Philosophy. This comprised nearly the 
whole of Aristotle's Physical treatises — his very worst 
side — together with his Metaphysics, some parts of 
which are hardly distinguishable from the Physics. 
Next was the very difficult treatise — De Anima, on 
the mind, or Soul — and some allied Psychological 
treatises, as that on Memory. Such was the ordinary 
and sufficing curriculum. It was allowed to be varied 
with a part of the Ethics ; but in this age we do not 
find the Politics ; and the Rhetoric is never men- 
tioned. So also, the really valuable Biological works 
of Aristotle, including his book on Animals, appear 
to have been neglected. 

Certain portions of Mathematics always found a 
place in the curriculum. Likewise, some work on 
Astronomy, which was one of the quadrivium sub- 
jects. 

All this was given in Latin. Greek was not then 
known (it was introduced into Scotland, in 1534). 
No classical Latin author is given ; the education in 
Latin was finished at the Grammar School. 



MANNER OF TEACHING. 

Such was the Arts' Faculty of the 15th century ; a 
dreary, single- manned, Aristotelian quadriennium. 



TEACHING EXCLUSIVELY BY TEXTS. 1 85 

The position is not completely before us, till we 
understand farther the manner of working. 

The pupils could not, as a rule, possess the text of 
Aristotle. The teacher read and expounded the text 
for them ; but a very large portion of the time was 
always occupied in dictating, or "diting," notes, 
which the pupils were examined upon, vivcl voce ; 
their best plan usually being to get them by heart, as 
any one might ask them to repeat passages literally ; 
while perhaps few could examine well upon the 
meaning. The notes would be selections and abridg- 
ments from Aristotle, with the comments of modern 
writers. The "diting" system was often complained 
of as waste of time, but was not discontinued till 
the third, or present, University dynasty, and not 
entirely then, as many of us know. 

The teaching was thus exclusively Text teaching. 
The teacher had little or nothing to say for himself 
(at least in the earliest period). He was even restricted 
in the remarks he might make by way of commentary. 
He was as nearly as possible a machine. 

But lastly, to complete the view of the first period, 
we must add the practice of Disputation, of which 
we shall have a better idea from the records of the 
next period. This practice was co-eval with the 
Universities ; it was the single mode of stimulating 
the thought of the individual student ; the chief anti- 
dote to the mechanical teaching by Text-books and 
dictation. 

The pre-Reformation period of Aberdeen Univer- 
sity was little more than sixty years. For a portion 



1 86 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

of those years it attained celebrity. In 1541, the 
town was honoured by a visit from James V., and the 
University contributed to his entertainment. The 
somewhat penny-a-lining account is, that there were 
exercises and disputations in Greek, Latin, and other 
languages ! The official records, however, show that 
the College at that very time had sunk into a convent 
and conventual school. 



SECOND PERIOD — THE REFORMATION, 

The Reformation introduced the second period, and 
made important changes. First of all, in the great 
convulsion of European thought, the ascendancy of 
Aristotle was shaken. It is enough to mention two 
incidents in the downfall of the mighty Stagyrite. 
One was the attack on him by the renowned Peter 
Ramus, in the University of Paris. Our countryman, 
Andrew Melville, attended Ramus's Lectures, and 
became the means of introducing his system into 
Scotland. The other incident is still more notable. 
The Reformers had to consider their attitude towards 
Aristotle. At first their opinion was condemnatory. 
Luther regarded him as a very devil ; he was " a god- 
less bulwark of the Papists ". Melancthon was also 
hostile ; but he soon perceived that Theology would 
crumble into fanatical dissolution without the co- 
operation of some philosophy. As yet there was 
nothing to fall back upon except the pagan systems. 
Of these, Melancthon was obliged to confess that 
Aristotle was the least objectionable, and was, more- 



NEW SUBJECTS INTRODUCED BY MELVILLE. 187 

over, in possession. The plan, therefore, was to accept 
him as a basis, and fence him round with orthodox 
emendations. This done, Aristotle, no longer des- 
potic, but as a limited constitutional monarch, had his 
reign prolonged a century and a half. 

THE MODIFIED CURRICULUM— ANDREW MELVILLE. 

The first thing, after the Reformation in Scotland, 
was to purge the Universities of the inflexible adher- 
ents of the old faith. Then came the question of 
amending the Curriculum, not simply with a view to 
Protestantism, but for the sake of an enlightened 
teaching. The right man appeared at the right 
moment. In 1574, Andrew Melville, then in Geneva, 
received pressing invitations to come home and take 
part in the needed reforms. He was immediately 
made Principal of Glasgow University, at that time 
in a state of utter collapse and ruin. He had ma- 
tured his plans, after consultation with George Buch- 
anan, and they were worthy of a great reformer. He 
sketched a curriculum, substantially the curriculum 
of the second University period. The modifications 
upon the almost exclusive Aristotelianism of the first 
period, were significant. The Greek language was 
introduced, and Greek classical authors read. The 
reading in the Roman classics was extended. A 
text-book on Rhetoric accompanied the classical 
readings. The dialectics of Ramus made the prelude 
to Logic, instead of the three treatises of the old 
Logic. The Mathematics included Euclid. Geo- 
graphy and Cosmography were taken up. Then 



l88 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

came a course of Moral Philosophy on an enlarged 
basis. With the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle, 
were combined Cicero's Ethical works and certain 
Dialogues of Plato. Finally, in the Physics, Mel- 
ville still used Aristotle, but along with a more 
modern treatise. He also gave a view of Universal 
History and Chronology. 

This curriculum, which Melville took upon himself 
to teach, in order to train future teachers, was the 
point of departure of the courses in all the Univer- 
sities during the second period. With variations of 
time and place, the Arts' course may be described as 
made up of the Greek and Latin classics, with Rhe- 
toric, Logic, and Dialectics, Moral Philosophy, or 
Ethics, Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy. The 
little text-book of Rhetoric, by Talon or Talseus, 
was made up of notes from the Lectures of Peter 
Ramus, and used in all our Colleges till superseded 
by the better compilation of the Dutch scholar, Gerard 
John Voss. 

Melville had to contend with many opponents, 
among them the sticklers, for the infallibility of the 
Stagyrite. Like the German Reformers, he had 
accepted Aristotelianism as a basis, with a similar 
process of reconciliation. So it was that Aristotle 
and Calvin were brought to kiss each other. 

ATTEMPT TO ABOLISH REGENTING. 

Melville's next proposal was all too revolutionary. 
It consisted in restricting the Regents each to a 
special group of subjects ; in fact, anticipating our 



MELVILLE DEFEATED ON THE REGENTING. 1S9 

modern professoriate. He actually set up this plan 
in Glasgow . one Regent took Greek and Latin ; 
another, his nephew, James Melville, took Mathe- 
matics, Logic, and Moral Philosophy ; a third, Physics 
and Astronomy. The system went on, in appearance 
at least, for fifty years ; it is only in 1642, that we 
find the Regents given without a specific designation. 
Why it should have gone on so long, and been then 
dropt, we are not informed. Melville's influence 
started it" in the other Universities, but it was de- 
feated in every one from the very outset. After six 
years at Glasgow, he went to St. Andrew's as Prin- 
cipal and Professor of Divinity, and tried there the 
same reforms, but the resistance was too great. In 
spite of a public enactment, the division of labour 
among the Regents was never carried out. Yet such 
was Melville's authority, that the same enactment was 
extended to King's College, in a scheme having a re- 
markable history — the so-called New Foundation of 
Aberdeen University, promulgated in a Royal Charter 
of about the year 1581. The Earl Marischal was a 
chief promoter of the plan of reform comprised in 
this charter. The division of labour among the Re- 
gents was most expressly enjoined. The plan fell 
through ; and there was a legal dispute fifty years 
afterwards as to whether it had ever any legal vali- 
dity. Charles I. was made to express indignation 
at the idea of reducing the University to a school ! 

We now approach the foundation of Marischal 
College. The Earl Marischal may have been actu- 
ated by the failure of his attempt to reform King's 



190 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

College. At all events, his mind was made up to 
follow Melville in assigning separate subjects to his 
Regents. The Charter is explicit on this head. Yet 
in spite of the Charter and in spite of his own pres- 
ence, the intention was thwarted ; the old Regenting 
lasted 160 years. 

ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS TOO LONG MAINTAINED. 

Still the Curriculum reform was gained. There 
was, indeed, one great miss. The year before Mar- 
ischal College was founded, Galileo had published 
his work on Mechanics, which, taken with what had 
been accomplished by Archimedes and others, laid 
the foundations of our modern Physics. Copernicus 
had already published his work on the Heavens. It 
was now time that the Aristotelian Physics should be 
clean swept away. In this whole department, Aris- 
totle had made a reign of confusion ; he had thrown 
the subject back, being himself off the rails from first 
to last. Had there been in Scotland an adviser in 
this department, like Melville in general literature, or 
like Napier of Merchiston in pure mathematics, one 
fourth of the college teaching might have been re- 
claimed from utter waste, and a healthy tone of think- 
ing diffused through the remainder. 

A curious fascination always attached to the study 
of Astronomy, even when there was not much to be 
said, apart from the unsatisfactory disquisitions of 
Aristotle. A little book, entitled " Sacrobosco on the 
Sphere," containing little more than what we should 
now teach to boys and girls, along with the Globes, 



GRADUATION BY MEANS OF DISPUTES ON THESIS. 19I 

was a University text-book throughout Europe for 
centuries. I was informed by a late King's College 
professor that the Use of the Globes was, within his 
memory, taught in the Magistrand Class. This would 
be simply what is termed a " survival ". 

SYSTEM OF DISPUTATION. 

Now as to the mode of instruction. There were 
viva voce examinations upon the notes, such as we 
can imagine. But the stress was laid on Disputa- 
tions and Declamations in various forms. Besides 
disputing and declaiming on the regular class work 
before the Regent, we find that, in Edinburgh, and I 
suppose elsewhere, the classes were divided into com- 
panies, who met apart, and conferred and debated 
among themselves daily. The students were occupied, 
altogether, six hours a day. Then the higher classes 
were frequently pitched against each other. This 
was a favourite occupation on Saturdays. The doc- 
trines espoused by the leading students became their 
nicknames. The pass for Graduation consisted in the 
propugning or impugning of questions by each candi- 
date in turn. An elaborate Thesis was drawn up by 
the Regent, giving the heads of his philosophy course ; 
this was accepted by the candidates, signed by them, 
and printed at their expense. Then on the day of 
trial, at a long sitting, each candidate stood up and 
propunged or impunged a portion of the Thesis ; all 
were heard in turn ; and on the result the Degree was 
conferred. A good many of these Theses are pre- 
served in our Library ; some of them are very long — 



192 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

a hundred pages of close type ; they are our best clue 
to the teaching of the period. We can see how far 
Aristotle was qualified by modern views. 

REGENTING DOOMED. 

I said there might have been times when the 
students never had the relief of a second face all the 
four years. The exceptions are of importance. First, 
as regards Marischal College. Within a few years of 
the foundation, Dr. Duncan Liddell founded the Mathe- 
matical Chair, and thus withdrew from the Regents 
the subject that most of all needed a specialist ; a 
succession of very able mathematicians sat in this 
chair. King's College had not the same good fortune. 
From its foundation it possessed a separate func- 
tionary, the Humanist or Grammarian ; but he had 
also, till 1753, to act as Rector of the Grammar 
School. Edinburgh obtained from an early date a 
Mathematical chair, occupied by men of celebrity. 
There was no other innovation till near the end of the 
17th century, when Greek was isolated both in Edin- 
burgh and in Marischal College ; but the end of 
Regenting was then near. 

The old system, however, had some curious writh- 
ings. During the troubled 17th century, University 
reform could not command persistent attention. But ' 
after the 1688-Revolution, opinions were strongly 
expressed in favour of the Melville system. The 
obvious argument was urged, that, by division oi 
labour each man would be able to master a special 
subject, and do it justice in teaching. Yet, it was 



AGE OF THE PROFESSORIATE. 193 

replied, that, by the continued intercourse, the master 
knew better the humours, inclinations, and talents of 
their scholars. To which the answer was — the 
humours and inclinations of scholars are not so deeply 
hid but that in a few weeks they appear. Moreover, 
it was said, the students are more respectful to a 
Master while he is new to them. 

The final division of subjects took place in Edin- 
burgh, in 1708 ; in Glasgow, in 1727 ; in St. Andrews, 
in 1747. In Marischal College, the change was made 
by a minute of nth Jan., 1753 ; but, whether from 
ignorance, or from want of grace, the Senatus did 
not record its satisfaction at having, after a lapse of 
five generations, fulfilled the wishes of the pious 
founder. In King's College, the old system lasted till 
1798. 

This closes the second age of the Universities, and 
introduces the third age, the age of the Professoriate, 
of Lecturing instead of Text-books, the end of Dispu- 
tation, and the use of the English Language. It was 
now, and not till now, that the Scottish Universities 
stood forth, in several leading departments of know- 
ledge, as the teachers of the world. 

THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE POLITICAL 
REVOLUTIONS. 

The second age of the Universities was Scotland's 
most trying time. In a hundred and thirty years, the 
country had passed through four revolutions and 
counter-revolutions ; every one of which told upon 



194 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

the Universitites. The victorious party imposed its 
test upon the University teacher, and drove out re- 
cusants. You must all know something of the purging 
of the University and the Ministry of Aberdeen by 
the Covenanting General Assembly of 1640. These 
deposed Aberdeen doctors may have had too strong 
leanings to episcopacy in the Church and to absolut- 
ism in the State, but they were not Vicars of Bray. 
The first half of the century was adorned by a band 
of scholars, who have gained renown by their culti- 
vation of Latin poetry ; a little oasis in the desert of 
Aristotelian Dialectics. It would be needless and 
ungracious to enquire whether this was the best thing 
that could have been done for the generation of 
Bishop Patrick Forbes. 

Your reading in the History of Scotland will thus 
bring you face to face with the great powers that con- 
tended for the mastery from 1560: the Monarchy, 
always striving to be absolute ; the Church, whose 
position made it the advocate of popular freedom ; the 
Universities, fluctuating as regards political liberty, 
but standing up for intellectual liberty. In the 17th 
century the Church ruled the Universities ; in the 
1 8th, it may be said, that the Universities returned 
the compliment. 

UNIVERSITIES NOT ESSENTIAL FOR PROFESSIONS. 

Enough for the past. A word or two on the pre- 
sent. What is now the need for a University system, 
and what must the system be to answer that need ? 
Many things are altered since the 12th century. 



PROFESSIONAL TEACHING BY APPRENTICESHIP. 1 95 

First, then, Universities, as I understand them, are 
not absolutely essential to the teaching of professions. 
Let me make an extreme supposition. A great naval 
commander, like Nelson, is sent on board ship, at 
eleven or twelve ; his previous knowledge, or general 
training, is what you may suppose for that age. It is 
in the course of actual service, and in no other way, 
that he acquires his professional fitness for command- 
ing fleets. Is this right or is it wrong ? Perhaps it is 
wrong, but it has gone on so for a long time. Well, 
why may not a preacher be formed on the same plan? 
John Wesley was not a greater man in preaching, 
than Nelson in seamanship. Take, then, a youth of 
thirteen from the school. Apprentice him to the 
minister of a parish. Let him make at once pre- 
parations for clerical work. Let him store his memory 
with sermons, let him make abstracts of Divinity 
systems ; master the best exegetical commentators. 
Then, in a year or two, he would begin to catechise 
the young, to give addresses in the way of exposition, 
exhortation, encouragement, and rebuke. Practice 
would bring facility. Might not, I say, seven years of 
the actual work, in the susceptible period of life, make 
a preacher of no mean power, without the Grammar 
School, without the Arts' Classes, without the Divinity 
Hall? 

What then do we gain by taking such a round- 
about approach to our professional work? The 
answer is twofold. 

First, as regards the profession itself. Nearly 
every skilled occupation, in our time, involves prin- 



196 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

ciples and facts that have been Investigated, and are 
taught, outside the profession ; to the medical man 
are given courses of Chemistry, Physiology, and so 
on. Hence to be completely equipped for your pro- 
fessional work, you must repair to the teachers of 
those tributary departments of knowledge. The 
requirement, however, is not absolute ; it admits of 
being evaded. Your professional teachers ought to 
master these outside subjects, and give you just as 
much of them as you need, and no more ; which 
would be an obvious economy of your valuable time. 

Thus, I apprehend, the strictly professional uses of 
general knowledge fail to justify the Grammar School 
and the Arts' curriculum. Something, indeed, may 
still be said for the higher grades of professional ex- 
cellence, and for introducing improved methods into 
the practice of the several crafts ; for which wider 
outside studies lend their aid. This, however, is not 
enough ; inventors are the exception. In fact, the 
ground must be widened, and include, secondly, the 
life beyond the profession. We are citizens of a self- 
governed country ; members of various smaller socie- 
ties ; heads, or members of families. We have, more- 
over, to carve out recreation and enjoyment as the 
alternative and the reward of our professional toil. 
Now the entire tone and character of this life outside 
the profession, is profoundly dependent on the com- 
pass of our early studies. He that leaves the school 
for the shop at thirteen, is on one platform. He that 
spends the years from thirteen to twenty in acquiring 
general knowledge, is on a totally different platform ; 



THE GRADUATE AS SUCH. I 97 

he is, in the best sense, an aristocrat. Those that 
begin work at thirteen, and those that are born not to 
work at all, are alike his inferiors. He should be able 
to spread light all around. He it is that may stand 
forth before the world as the model man. 



THE IDEAL GRADUATE. 

All this supposes that you realise the position ; that 
you fill up the measure of the opportunities ; that you 
keep in view at once the Professional life, the Citizen 
life, and the life of Intellectual tastes. The mere pro- 
fessional man, however prosperous, cannot be a power 
in society, as the Arts' graduate may become. His 
leisure occupations are all of a lower stamp. He does 
not participate in the march of knowledge. He must 
be aware of his incompetence to judge for himself in 
the greater questions of our destiny ; his part is to be 
a follower, and not a leader. 

It is not, then, the name of graduate that will do 
all this. It is not a scrape pass ; it is not decent 
mediocrity with a languid interest. It is a fair and 
even attention throughout, supplemented by auxili- 
aries to the class work. It is such a hold of the lead- 
ing subjects, such a mastery of the various alphabets, 
as will make future references intelligible, and a con- 
tinuation of the study possible. 

Our curriculum is one of the completest in the 
country, or perhaps anywhere. By the happy thought 
of the Senatus of Marischal College, in 1753, you have 
a fundamental class (Natural History) not existing in 



198 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

the other colleges. You have a fair representation 
of the three great lines of science — the Abstract, the 
Experimental, and the Classifying. When it is a 
general education that you are thinking of, every 
scheme of option is imperfect that does not provide 
for such three-sided cultivation of our reasoning 
powers. A larger quantity of one will no more 
serve for the absence of the rest than a double 
covering of one part of the body, will enable another 
part to be left bare. 

VOLUNTARY EXTENSION OF THE BASIS. 

Your time in the Arts' curriculum is not entirely 
used up by the classes. You can make up for defi- 
ciences in the course, when once you have formed 
your ideal of completeness. For a year or two after 
graduating, while still rejoicing in )'outhful freshness, 
you can be widening your foundations. The thing 
then is, to possess a good scheme and to abide by it. 
Now, making every allowance for the variation of 
tastes and of circumstances, and looking solely to 
what is desirable for a citizen and a man, it is im- 
possible to refuse the claims of the department of 
Historical and Social study. One or two good re- 
presentative historical periods might be thoroughly 
mastered in conjunction with the best theoretical 
compends of Social Philosophy. 

Farther, the ideal graduate, who is to guide and 
not follow opinion, should be well versed in all the 
bearings of the Spiritual Philosophy of the time. 



THE WELL-INSTRUCTED MAN. 1 99 

The subject branches out into wide regions, but not 
wider than you should be capable of following it. 
This is not a professional study merely ; it is the 
study of a well-instructed man. 

Once more. A share of attention should be be- 
stowed early on the higher Literature of the Imagina- 
tion. As, in after life, poetry and elegant composition 
are to be counted on as a pleasure and solace, they 
should be taken up at first as a study. The critical 
examination of styles, and of authors, which forms 
an admirable basis of a student's society, should be 
a work of study and research. The advantages will 
be many and lasting. To conceive the exact scope 
and functions of the Imagination in art, in science, 
in religion, and everywhere, will repay the trouble. 

THE ARTS' GRADUATE IN LITERATURE. 

Ever since I remember, I have been accustomed 
to hear of the superiority of the Arts' graduate, in 
various crafts, more especially as a teacher. Many 
of you in these days pass into another vocation — 
Letters, or the Press. Here too, almost everything 
you learn will pay you professionally. Still, I am 
careful not to rest the case for general education on 
professional grounds alone. I might show you that 
the highest work of all — original enquiry — needs a 
broad basis of liberal study ; or at all events is vastly 
aided by that. Genius will work on even a narrow 
basis, but imperfect preparatory study leaves marks 
of imperfection in the product. 



200 THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL. 

The same considerations that determine your volun- 
tary studies, determine also the University Ideal. A 
University, in my view, stands or falls with its Arts' 
Faculty. Without debating the details, we may say 
that this Faculty should always be representative of 
the needs of our intelligence, both for the professional 
and for the extra-professional life ; it should not be 
of the shop, shoppy. The University exists because 
the professions would stagnate without it ; and still 
more, because it may be a means of enlarging know- 
ledge at all points. Its watchword is Progress. We 
have, at last, the division of labour in teaching ; out- 
side the University, teachers too much resemble the 
Regent of old — having too many subjects, and too 
much time spent in grinding. Our teachers are ex- 
actly the reverse. 

Yet, there cannot be progress without a sincere 
and single eye to the truth. The fatal sterility of 
the middle ages, and of our first and second Univer- 
sity periods, had to do with the mistake of gagging 
men's mouths, and dictating all their conclusions. 
Things came to be so arranged that contradictory 
views ran side by side, like opposing electric cur- 
rents ; the thick wrappage of ingenious phraseology 
arresting the destructive discharge. There was, in- 
deed, an elaborate and pretentious Logic, supplied 
by Aristotle, and amended by Bacon ; what was still 
wanted was a taste of the Logic of Freedom. 



VII. 

THE ART OF STUDY. 



10 



THE ART OF STUDY. 

Of hackneyed subjects, a foremost place may be 
assigned to the Art of Study. Allied to the theory 
and practice of Education generally, it has still a 
field of its own, although not very precisely marked 
out. It relates more to self-education than to in- 
struction under masters ; it supposes the voluntary 
choice of the individual rather than the constraint of 
an outward discipline. Consequently, the time for 
its application is when the pupil is emancipated from 
the prescription and control of the scholastic curri- 
culum. 

There is another idea closely associated with our 
notion of study — namely, learning from books. We 
may stretch the word, without culpable licence, to 
comprise the observation of facts of all kinds, but it 
more naturally suggests the resort to book lore for 
the knowledge that we are in quest of. There is a 
considerable propriety in restricting it to this mean- 
ing ; or, at all events, in treating the art of becoming 
wise through reading, as different from the arts of 
observing facts at first hand. In short, study should 
not be made co-extensive with knowledge getting, 
but with book learning. In thus narrowing the field, 
we have the obvious advantage of cultivating it. more 



204 THE ART OF STUDY. 

carefully, and the unobvious, but very real, advantage 
of dealing with one homogeneous subject. 

In the current phrase, "studying under some one," 
there is a more express reference to being taught 
by a master, as in listening to lectures. There is, 
however, the implication that the learner is applying 
his own mind to the special field, and, at the same 
time, is not neglecting the other sources of know- 
ledge, such as books. The master is looked upon 
rather as a guide to enquiry, than as the sole foun- 
tain of the information sought. 

Thus, then, the mental exercise that we now call 
" study " began when books began ; when knowledge 
was reduced to language and laid out systematically 
in verbal compositions. A certain form of it existed 
in the days when language was as yet oral merely ; 
when there might be long compositions existing 
only in the memory of experts, and communicable 
by speech alone. But study then was a very simple 
affair : it would consist mainly in attentive listening 
to recitation, so as to store up in the memory what 
was thus communicated. The art, if any, would attach 
equally to the reciter and to the listener ; the duty 
of the one would be to accommodate his lessons in 
time, quantity, and mode of delivery to the retentive 
capacity of the other ; who, in his turn, would be 
required to con and recapitulate what he had been 
told, until he made it his own, whatever it might 
be worth. 

Even when books came into existence, an art of 
study would be at first very simple. The whole 



BOOK STUDY AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 205 

extent of book literature among the Jews before 
Christ would be soon read ; and, when once read, 
there was nothing left but to re-read it in whole or in 
part, with a view of committal to memory, whether 
for meditative reflection, or for awakening the emo- 
tions. We see, in the Psalms of David, the emphasis 
attached to mental dwelling on the particulars of the 
Mosaic Law, as the nourishment of the feelings of 
devotion. 

The Greek Literature about 350 B.C., when Aris- 
totle and Demosthenes had reached manhood (being 
then 34), had attained a considerable mass ; as one 
may see at a glance from Jebb's chronology attached 
to his Primer. There was a splendid poetical library, 
including all the great tragedians, with the older and 
the middle Comedy. There were the three great 
historians — Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon ; 
and the orators — Lysias, Isocrates, and Isseus ; there 
were the precursors of Socrates in Philosophy ; and, 
finally, the Platonic Dialogues. To overtake all these 
would employ several years of learned leisure ; and 
to imbibe their substance would be a rich and varied 
culture, especially of the poetic and rhetorical kind. 
To make the most of the field, a judicious procedure 
would be very helpful ; there was evident scope for 
an art of study. The fertile intellect of the Greeks 
produced the first systematic guides to high culture ; 
the Rhetorical art for Oratory and Poetry, the Logical 
art for Reasoning, and the Eristic art for Disputation. 
There was nothing precisely corresponding to an Art 
of Study, but there were examples of the self culture 



2o6 THE ART OF STUDY. 

of celebrated men. The most notorious of these' is 
Demosthenes ; of whom we know that, while he took 
special lessons in the art of oratory, he also bestowed 
extraordinary pains upon the general cultivation of 
his intellectual powers. His application to Thucy- 
dides in particular is recounted in terms of obvious 
mythical exaggeration ; showing, nevertheless, his 
idea of fixing upon a special book with a view to 
extracting from it every particle of intellectual nour- 
ishment that it could yield : in which we have an ex- 
ample of the art of study as I have defined it. Then, 
it is said that, in his anxiety to master his author, he 
copied the entire work eight times, with his own 
hand, and had it by heart verbatim, so as to be able 
to re-write it when the manuscripts were accidentally 
destroyed. Both points enter into the art of study, 
and will come under review in the sequel. 

We do not possess from the genius of Aristotle — 
the originator or improver of so many practical de- 
partments — an Art of Study. The omission was not 
supplied by any other Greek writer known to us. 
The oratorical art was a prominent part of education 
both in Greece and in Rome ; and was discussed 
by many authors— notably by Cicero himself; but 
the exhaustive treatment is found in Ouintilian. 
The very wide scope of the "Institutes of Oratory" 
comprises a chapter upon the orator's reading, in 
which the author reviews the principal Greek and 
Roman classics from Homer to Seneca, with remarks 
upon the value of each for the mental cultivation of 
the oratorical pupil. Something of this sort might be 



MODERN GUIDES TO STUDY. 207 

legitimately included in the art of study, but might 
also be withheld, as being provided in the critical 
estimates already formed respecting all writers of 
note. 

After Quintilian, it is little use to search for an 
art of study, either among the later Latin classics, 
or among the mediaeval authors generally. I proceed 
at once to remark upon the well-known essay of 
Bacon, which shows his characteristic subtlety, judi- 
ciousness, and weight ; yet is too short for practical 
guidance. He hits the point, as I conceive it, when he 
identifies study with reading, and brings in, but only 
by way of contrast and complement, conference or 
conversation and composition. He endeavours to 
indicate the worth of book learning, as an essential 
addition to the actual practice of business, and the 
experience of life. He marks a difference between 
books that we are merely to dip into (books to be 
tasted) and such as are to be mastered ; without, 
however, stating examples. He ventures also to 
settle the respective kinds of culture assignable to 
different departments of knowledge — history, poetry, 
mathematics, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, 
logic and rhetoric ; a very useful attempt in its own 
way, and one that may well enough enter into a 
comprehensive art of study, if not provided for in 
the still wider theory of Education at large. 

Bacon's illustrious friend, Hobbes, did not write on 
studies, but made a notable remark bearing on one 
topic connected with the art, — namely, that if he had 
read as much as other men, he should have remained 



208 THE ART OF STUDY. 

still as ignorant as other men. This must not be ! 
interpreted too literally. Hobbes was really a great 
reader of the ancients, and must have studied with 
care some of the philosophers immediately preceding 
himself. Still, it indicates an important point for 
discussion in the art of study, in which great men 
have gone to opposite extremes — I mean in reference 
to the amount of attention to be given to previous 
writers, in taking up new ground. 

To come down to another great name, we have 
Milton's ideal of Education, given in his short Trac- 
tate. Here, with many protestations of knowing 
things, rather than words, we find an enormous pre- 
scription of book reading, including, in fact, every 
known author on every one of a wide circle of subjects. 
This was characteristic of the man : he was a vora- 
cious reader himself, and an example to show, in 
opposition to Hobbes, that original genius is not 
necessarily quenched by great or even excessive 
erudition. As bearing on the art of study, especi- 
ally for striplings under twenty, Milton's scheme is 
open to two criticisms : first, that the amount of 
reading on the whole is too great ; second, that in 
subjects handled by several authors of repute, one 
should have been selected as the leading text-book 
and got up thoroughly ; the others being taken in 
due time as enlarging or correcting the knowledge 
thus laid in. Think of a boy learning Rhetoric upon 
six authors taken together ! 

The transition from Milton to Locke is the inverse 
of that from Hobbes to Milton. Locke was also a 



locke's conduct of the understanding. 209 

man of few books. If he had been sent to school 
under Milton, as he might have been,* he would have 
very soon thrown up the learned drudgery prescribed 
for him, and would have bolted. 

The practical outcome of Locke's enquiries respect- 
ing the human faculties is to be found in the little 
treatise named — " The Conduct of the Understand- 
ing ". It is an earnest appeal in favour of devotion 
to the attainment of truth, and an exposure ©f all the 
various sources of error, moral and intellectual ; more 
especially prejudices and bias. There are not, how- 
ever, many references to book study ; and such as we 
find are chiefly directed to the one aim of painful and 
laborious examination, first, of an author's meaning, 
and next of the goodness of his arguments. Two 
or three sentences will give the clue. " Those who 
have read of everything, are thought to understand 
everything too ; but it is not always so. Reading 
furnishes the mind only with materials of know- 
ledge ; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We 
are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to 
cram ourselves with a great deal of collections ; unless 
we chew them over again, they will not give us strength 
and nourishment." Farther : " Books and reading 
are looked upon to be the great helps of the under- 
standing, and instruments of knowledge, as it must 
be allowed that they are ; and yet I beg leave to 
question whether these do not prove a hindrance to 
many, and keep several bookish men from attaining 
to solid and true knowledge". Here, again, is his 

* Milton had charge of pupils in 1644, when Locke was twelve. 



2IO THE ART OF STUDY. 

stern way of dealing with any author : — " To fix in 
the mind the clear and distinct idea of the question 
stripped of words ; and so likewise, in the train of 
argumentation, to take up the author's ideas, neglect- 
ing his words, observing how they connect or separate 
those in the question." Of this last, more afterwards, 
A disciple of Locke, and a man of considerable 
and various powers, the non-conformist divine Isaac 
Watts, produced perhaps the first considerable di- 
dactic treatise on Study. I refer, of course, to his 
well-known work entitled "The Improvement of the 
Mind " ; on which, he tells us, he was occupied at in- 
tervals for twenty years. It has two Parts : one on 
the acquisition of knowledge ; the other on Communi- 
cation or Teaching. The scheme is a very wide one. 
Observation, Reading, attending Lectures, Conversa- 
tion, — are all included. To the word " Study," Watts 
attaches a special meaning, namely Meditation and 
Reflection, together with the control or regulation of 
all the exercises of the mind. I doubt if this mean- 
ing is well supported by usage. At all events it is 
not the signification that I propose to attach to the 
term. Observation is an art in itself: so is Conver- 
sation, whether amicable or contentious. The propor- 
tions that these exercises should bear to reading, 
would fairly claim a place in the complete Art of 
Study. 

Watts has two short chapters on Books and Read- 
ing, containing sensible remarks. He urges the im- 
portance of thorough mastery of select authors ; but 
assumes a power of discriminating good and bad 



WATTS S IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND. 211 

beyond the reach of a learner, and does not show 
how it is to be attained. He is very much concerned 
all through as to the moral tone and religious ortho- 
doxy of the books read. He also reproves hasty and 
ill-natured judgments upon the authors. 

Watts's Essay is so pithily written, and so full of 
sense and propriety, that it long maintained a high 
position in our literature ; he tells us, that it had be- 
come a text-book in the University. I do not know 
of any better work on the same plan. A " Student's 
Guide," by an American named Todd, was in vogue 
with us, some time ago ; but anyone looking at its 
contents, will not be sorry that it is now forgotten. 
It would not, however, be correct to say that the 
subject has died out. If there have not been many 
express didactic treatises of late, there has been an 
innumerable host of small dissertations, in the form 
of addresses, speeches, incidental discussions, leading 
articles, sermons — all intended to guide both young 
and old in the path of useful study. What to read, 
when to read, and how to read, — have been themes of 
many an essay, texts of many a discourse. Accord- 
ing as Education at large has been more and more 
discussed, the particular province of self-education, 
as here marked out, has had an ample share of at- 
tention from more or less qualified advisers. 

What we have got before us, then, is, first, to define 
our ground, and then to appropriate and value the 
accumulated fruits of the labour expended on it. I 
have already indicated how I would narrow the sub- 
ject of Study, so as to occupy a field apart, and not 



2 12 THE ART OF STUDY, 

jumble together matters that follow distinct laws. 
The theory of Education in general is the theory of 
good Teaching : that is a field by itself, although 
many things in it are applicable also to self-educa- 
tion. To estimate the values of different acquisitions 
— Science, Language, and the rest, is good for all modes 
of culture. The laws of the understanding in general, 
and of the memory in particular, must be taken into 
account under every mode of acquiring knowledge. 
Yet the alteration of circumstances, when a pupil is 
carving out his own course, and working under his 
own free-will, leads to new and distinct rules of 
procedure. Also, that part of self-education consist- 
ing in the application to books is distinct from the 
other forms of mental cultivation, namely, conversing, 
disputing, original composition, and tutorial aid. Each 
of these has its own rules or methods, which I do 
not mean to notice except by brief allusion. 

In connection with the Plan of study, it is material 
to ask what the individual is studying for. Each 
profession, each accomplishment, has its own course of 
education. If book reading is an essential part,- then 
the choice of books must follow the line of the special 
pursuit. This is obvious ; but does not do away 
with the consideration of the best modes of studying 
whatever books are suitable for the end. One man 
has to read in Chemistry, another in Law, another in 
Divinity, and so on. For each and all of these, there 
is a profitable and an unprofitable mode of working, 
and the speciality of the matter is unessential. 

The more important differences of subject, in- 



DIFFERENT ENDS OF STUDV. 213 

volving differences of method, are seen in such 
contrasted departments as Science and Language, 
Thought and Style, Reality and Poetry, Generality 
and Particularity. In applying the mind to these 
various branches, and in using books as the medium 
of acquisition, there are considerable differences in 
the mode of procedure. The study of a book of 
Science is not on the same plan as the study of 
a History or a Poem. Yet even in these last, there 
are many circumstances in common, arising out of 
the constitution of our faculties and the nature of a 
verbal medium of communication of thought. 

An art of Study in general should not presume to 
follow out in minute detail the education of the 
several professions. There should still be, for exam- 
ple, a distinct view of the training special in an 
Orator, on which the ancients bestowed so much 
pains ; there being no corresponding course hitherto 
chalked out for a Philosopher as such, or even for a 
Poet. 

Next, there is an important distinction between 
studies for a professional walk, and the studies of a 
man's leisure, with a view to gratifying a special taste, 
or for the higher object of independent thinking on 
all the higher questions belonging to a citizen and a 
man. Both positions has its peculiarities ; and an 
art of study should be catholic enough to embrace 
them. To have the best - part of the day for study, 
and the rest for recreation and refreshment, is one 
thing : and to study in by-hours, in snatches of time, 
and in holidays is quite another thing. In the latter 



214 THE ART OF STUDY. 

case, the choice of subjects, and the extent of them, 
must be considerably different ; while the considera- 
tion of the best modes of economizing time and 
strength, and of harmonizing one's life as a whole, 
is more pressing and more arduous. But, when the 
course is chalked out, the details of study must con- 
form to the general conditions of all acquirements 
in knowledge through the instrumentality of books. 

One, and only one, more preliminary clearing. 
When an instructor proceeds, as Milton in his school, 
or as James Mill with his son, by prescribing to each 
pupil a mass of books to be read, with more or less 
of examination as to their contents ; in such a case, 
education from without has passed into study in our 
narrow sense ; and the procedure for one situation 
is applicable to both. The two cases are equally in 
contrast to educating by the direct instruction of the 
teacher. In so far, however, as any teacher requires 
book study to co-operate with his own addresses, to 
that extent do the methods laid down for private 
study come into play. 

Under every view, it is a momentous fact, that- the 
man of modern times has become a book-reading 
animal. The acquisition of knowledge and the culti- 
vation of the intellectual powers of the mind, form 
only a small part of the use of books ; although the 
part more properly named Study. The moral 
tendencies are controlled ; the emotions regulated ; 
sympathy with mankind, or the opposite, generated ; 
pleasurable excitement afforded. These other uses 
may be provided apart, as in our literature of amuse- 



A TEXT-BOOK-IN-CHIEF. 215 

ment, or they may be given in combination with the 
element of knowledge, in which case they are apt to 
be a disturbing force, rendering uncertain our calcu- 
lations as to the efficacy of particular modes of study. 

The practical problem of Study is not to be 
approached by any high priori road ; in other words, 
by setting out from abstract principles as to the nature 
of the mind's receptivity and the operation of book- 
reading upon that receptivity. A humbler line of 
approach will be more likely to succeed. 

There exist a number of received maxims on study, 
the result of many men's experience and wisdom. 
Our endeavour will be to collect these, arrange them 
in a methodical plan, so that they may give mutual 
aid, and supply each other's defects. We shall go a 
little farther, and criticise them according to the best 
available lights ; and, when too vague or sweeping, 
supply needful qualifications. 

The Choice of Books, in the first instance, depends 
on the merits attributed to them severally by persons 
most conversant with the special department. In 
some degree, too, this choice is controlled by the 
consideration of the best modes of study, as will soon 
be apparent. 

I. Our first maxim is — " Select a Text-book-in- 
chief". The meaning is, that when a large subject is 
to be overtaken by book study alone, some one work 
should be chosen to apply to, in the first instance, 
which work should be conned and mastered before 



2l6 THE ART OF STUDY. 

any other is taken up. There being, in most subjects, 
a variety of good books, the thorough student will 
not be satisfied in the long run without consulting 
several, and perhaps making a study of them all ; 
yet, it is unwise to distract the attention with more 
than one, while the elements are to be learnt. In 
Geometry, the pupil begins upon Euclid, or some 
other compendium, and is not allowed to deviate 
from the single line of his author. If he is once 
thoroughly at home on the main ideas and the lead- 
ing propositions of Geometry, he is safe in dipping 
into other manuals, in comparing the differences of 
treatment, and in widening his knowledge by addi- 
tional theorems, and by various modes of demonstra- 
tion. 

In principle, the maxim is generally allowed. 
Nevertheless, it is often departed from in practice. 
This happens in several ways. 

One way is exemplified in Milton's Tractate, already 
referred to. His method of teaching any subject 
would appear to have been to take the received 
authors, and to read them one after another,- pro- 
bably according to date ; the reading pace, and degree 
of concentration, being apparently equal all through. 
His six authors on Rhetoric were — Plato (select Dia- 
logues, of course), Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Her- 
mogenes, Longinus. To read their several treatises 
through in the order named, with equal attention, 
would undoubtedly leave in the mind a good many 
thoughts on Rhetoric, but in a somewhat chaotic 
state. Much better would it have been to have 



MILTON S PLAN WITH HIS PUPILS. 21 7 

adopted a Text-book-in-chief, the choice lying be- 
tween Aristotle and Quintilian (who comes in at a 
prior stage of the Miltonic curriculum). The book 
so chosen would be read, and re-read ; or rather each 
chapter would be gone over several times, with ap- 
propriate testing exercises and examinations. The 
other works might then be overtaken and compared 
with the principal text-book ; the judgment of the 
pupil being so far matured, as to see what in them 
was already superseded, and what might be adopted 
as additions to his already acquired stock of ideas. 
Milton's views of education embraced the useful to a 
remarkable degree ; he was no pamperer of imagina- 
tion and the ornamental. His list of subjects might 
be said to be utility run wild : — comprising the chief 
parts of Mathematics, together with Engineering, 
Navigation, Architecture, and Fortification ; Natural 
Philosophy; Natural History; Anatomy, and Practice 
of Physic; Ethics, Politics, Economics, Jurisprudence, 
Theology ; a full course of the Orators and Poets ; 
Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetics. He tumbles out a whole 
library of reading : but only in Ethics, does he indi- 
cate a leading or preferential work ; the half-dozen of 
classical books on the subject are to be perused, 
" under the determinate sentence " of the scripture 
authorities. With all this voracity for the useful, 
Milton had no conception of scientific form, or method ; 
and indeed, few of the subjects had as yet passed 
the stage of desultory treatment ; so that the idea of 
casting the knowledge into some one form, under the 
guidance of a chosen author, would never occur to 



2l8 THE ART OF STUDY. 

him. Better things might have been expected of 
James Mill, in conducting the education of his son. 
Yet we find his plan to have been to require an even 
and exhaustive perusal of nearly every book on 
nearly every subject, without singling out any one 
to impart the best known form in each case. The 
disadvantage of the process would be that, at first, 
all the writers were regarded as profitable alike. 
Nevertheless, in the special subjects that he knew 
himself, he gave his own instructions as the leading 
text, and his pupil's knowledge took form according 
to these. In some cases, accident gave a text-in- 
chief, as when young Mill at ten years of age, studied 
Thomson's Chemistry, without the distraction of any 
other work. If there had been half-a-dozen Che- 
mical manuals in existence, he would probably have 
read them all, and fared much worse. It happens, 
however, that, in the" more exact sciences, there is a 
greater sameness in the leading ideas, than in Poli- 
tics, Morals, or the Human Mind ; and the evil of 
distraction is so much smaller. Undoubtedly, the 
best of all ways of learning anything is to have a 
competent master to dole out a fixed quantity every 
day, just sufficient to be taken in, and no more ; the 
pupils to apply themselves to the matter so imparted, 
and to do nothing else. The singleness of aim is fa- 
vourable to the greatest rapidity of acquirement ; and 
any defects are to be left out of account, until one 
thread of ideas is firmly set in the mind. Not in- 
frequently, however, and not improperly, the teacher 
has a text-book in aid of his oral instructions. To 



KEEPING TO A SINGLE LINE OF THOUGHT. 219 

make this a help, and not a hindrance, demands the 
greatest delicacy ; the sole consideration being that 
the pupil must be kept in one single line of thought, 
and never be required to comprehend, on the same 
point, conflicting or varying statements. 

Even the foot-notes to a work may have to be dis- 
regarded, in the first instance. They may act like 
a second author, and keep up an irritating friction. 
There is, doubtless, a consummate power of annota- 
tion that anticipates difficulties, and clears away 
haze, without distracting the mind. There is also an 
art of bringing out relief by an accompaniment, like 
the two images of the stereoscope. This is most 
likely to arise through a living teacher or commen- 
tator, who, by his tones and emphasis, as well as by 
his very guarded and reserved additions, can make 
the meaning of the author take shape and fulness. 

As the chief text-book is chosen, among other 
reasons, for its method and system, any defects on 
this head may be very suitably supplied, during the 
reader's progress, by notes or otherwise. When the 
end is clearly kept in view, we shall not go wrong as 
to the means : the spirit will remedy an undue bias to 
the letter. 

The subjects that depend for their full comprehen- 
sion upon a certain method and order of details, are 
numerous, and include the most important branches 
of human culture. The Sciences, in mass, are avow- 
edly of this character: even such departments as Theo- 
logy, Ethics, Rhetoric, and Criticism have their definite 
form ; and, until the mind of the student is fully im> 



220 THE ART OF STUDY. 

pressed with this, all the particulars are vague and 
chaotic, and comparatively useless for practical appli- 
cation. So, any subject cast in a polemic form must 
be received and held in the connection thereby given 
to it. If the arguments pro and con fall out of their 
places in the mind of the reader, their force is missed 
or misconceived. 

History is pre-eminently a subject for method, and, 
therefore, involves some such plan as is here recom- 
mended. Every narrative read otherwise than for 
mere amusement, as we read a novel, should leave in 
the mind — (i) the Chronological sequence (more or 
less detailed) ; and (2) the Causal sequence, that is, 
the influences at work in bringing about the events. 
These are best gained by application to a single work 
in the first place ; other works being resorted to in 
due time. 

Of the non-methodical subjects, forming an illus- 
trative contrast, mention may be made of purely 
didactic treatises, where the precepts are each valu- 
able for itself, and by itself: such as, until very 
recently, the works on Agriculture, and even on 
Medicine. A book of Domestic Receipts, consulted 
by index, is not a work for study. 

Poems and fictitious narrations will naturally be 
regarded as of the un-methodical class. If there are 
exceptions, they consist of long poems — Epics and 
Dramas — whose plan is highly artistic, and must be 
felt in order to the full effect. Probably, however, 
this is the merit that the generality of readers are 
content to miss, especially if greater strain of atten- 



REPUDIATION OF METHOD BY MEN OF REPUTE. 221 

tion is needed to discover it. Readers bent on enjoy- 
ment dwell on the passing page, and are not inclined 
to carry with them what has gone before, in order to 
understand what is to follow. 

Very intelligent and superior men have wholly 
repudiated the notion of study by method. We 
must not lay too much stress upon these disclaimers, 
seeing that they are usually cited from those in 
advanced years, or men whose day of methodical 
education is passed. When Johnson said — "A man 
ought to read just as inclination leads him," he 
was not thinking of beginners, for whom he would 
probably have dictated a different course. Still, it is 
a prevailing tendency of many minds, to read all 
books equally, provided the interest or enjoyment of 
them is equal. Macaulay, Sir William Hamilton, De 
Quincey, as well as Johnson, and a numerous host 
besides, were book-gluttons, books in breeches ; they 
imbibed information copiously, and also retained it, 
but as a matter of chance. The enjoyment of their 
life was to read ; whereas, to master thoroughly a 
considerable field of knowledge, can never be all 
enjoyment. Gibbon was a book devourer, but he 
had a plan ; he was organizing a vast work of 
composition. Macaulay, also, showed himself cap- 
able of realizing a scheme of composition ; both 
his History and his Speeches have the stamp of 
method, even to the pitch of being valuable as models. 
Hamilton and De Quincey, each in his way, could 
form high ideals of work, and in part execute them ; 
but their productiveness suffered from too much 



222 THE ART OF STUDY. 

bookish intoxication. While readers generally mix 
.the motive of instruction with stimulation, the class 
that seek instruction solely is but small ; the other 
extreme is frequent enough. 

In many subjects, the difficulties of fixing upon, the 
proper Text-book are not inconsiderable. The mere 
reputation of a book may be great, and well-founded; 
and yet the merits may not be of the kind that fits it 
for the commencing student. Such conditions as the 
following must be taken into account. The Form or 
Method should be of a high order : this we shall 
have occasion to illustrate under the next head. It 
should be abreast of the time, on its own subject. It 
should be moderately full, without being necessarily 
exhaustive in detail. It is on this point that the cheap 
primers of the present day are mainly defective. They 
state general ideas, and lay down outlines ; but they 
do not provide sufficiently expanded illustration to 
stamp these on the mind of the learner. A shilling 
primer is really a more advanced book than one on a 
triple scale, that should embrace the same compass of 
leading ideas. As a farther condition, the work 
chosen should not have so much of individuality as to 
fail in the character of representing the prevailing 
views. The greatest authors often err on this point ; 
and, while a work of genius is not to be neglected, it 
may, for this reason, have to take the second place in 
the order of study. Newton's Principia could never 
be a work suited for an early stage of mathematical 
study. Lyell's Geology has been a landmark in the 
history of the subject ; but it is not cast in the form 



DIFFICULTIES IN CHOOSING A FIRST TEXT-BOOK. 22.3 

for a beginner in Geology. It is, in its whole plan, 
argumentative ; setting up and defending a special 
thesis in Geology ; the facts being arrayed with that 
view. Many other great works have assumed a like 
form ; such are Malthus on Population, Grove's Cor- 
relation of Physical Forces, Darwin's Origin of Species. 
Even expressly didactic works are often composed 
more to bring forward a peculiar view, than from the 
desire to develop a subject in its due proportions. 
Locke's Essay on the Understanding does not pro- 
pose to give a methodical and exhaustive handling 
of the Powers of the Mind, or even of the Intellect. 
That was reserved for Reid. 

The questionas between old writers and new, would 
receive an easy solution upon such grounds as the 
foregoing, were it not for the sentiment of veneration 
for the old, because they are old. If an ancient writer 
retains a place by virtue of surpassing merits, as 
against all subsequent writers, his case is quite clear. 
In the nature of things, this must be rare : if there 
be an example, it is Euclid ; yet his position is held 
only through the mutual jealousy of his modern 
rivals. 

^* The only motive for commencing a study upon a 
very old writer is a desire to work out a subject 
historically ; which, in some instances may be allowed, 
but not very often. In Politics, Ethics, and Rhetoric, 
the plan might have its advantages ; but, with this 
imperative condition, that we shall follow out the 
development in the modern works. In proportion as 
a subject assumes a scientific shape, it must carefully 



224 THE ART 0F STUDY. 

define its terms, marshal its propositions in proper 
dependence, and offer strict proof of all matters of 
fact ; now, in these respects, every known branch of 
knowledge has improved with the lapse of ages ; so 
that the more recent works are necessarily the best 
for entering upon the study. A historical sequence 
may be proper to be observed ; but that should be 
backward and not forward. The earlier stages of 
some subjects are absolutely worthless ; as, for ex- 
ample, Physics, Chemistry, and most of Biology. In 
other subjects, as Politics and Ethics, the tentatives of 
such men as Plato and Aristotle have an undying 
value ; nevertheless, the student should not begin, but 
end, with them. 

There is an extreme form of putting our present 
doctrine that runs it into paradox : namely, the one- 
book-and-no-more maxim. Scarcely any book in 
existence is so all-sufficient for its purpose that a 
student is better occupied in" re-reading it for the 
tenth time, than in reading some others once. Even 
the merits of the one book are not fully known 
unless we compare it with others ; nor have we 
grasped any subject unless we are able to see it 
stated in various forms, without being distracted or 
confused. It is not a high knowledge c»f horseman- 
ship that can be gained by the most thorough ac- 
quaintance with one horse. 

Any truth that there is in the paradox of excluding 
all books but one from perusal, belongs to it as a 
form of the maxim we have now been considering. 



NO WORK ENTIRELY SELF-SUFFICIENT. 225 

There is not in existence a work corresponding to 
the notion of absolute self-sufficiency. Suppose we 
were to go over the chef-d 1 ceavres of human genius, 
we should not find one in the position of entire 
independence of all others. Take, for example, the 
poems of Homer ; the Republic and a few other of 
Plato's pre-eminent Dialogues ; the great speeches of 
Demosthenes; the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle; the 
poems of Dante ; Shakespeare, as a whole ; Bacon's 
Novum Organum ; Newton's Principia ; Locke on the 
Understanding ; the Mechanique Celeste of Laplace. 
No one of all these could produce its effect on the 
mind without referring to other works, previous, con- 
temporary, or following. The remark is not confined 
to works of elucidation and comment merely — as the 
contemporary history of Greece, or the speeches of 
Demosthenes — but extends to other compositions, of 
the very same tenor, by different, although inferior, 
writers. Shakespeare himself is made much more 
profitable by a perusal of the other Elizabethans, and 
by a comparison with , dramatic models before and 
after him. 

The nearest approach to a perfectly all-sufficing 
book is seen in scientific compilations by a conjunc- 
tion of highly accomplished editors. A new edition 
of Quain's Anatomy, revised and brought up to date 
by the best anatomists, would, for the moment, pro- 
bably be fully adequate to , the wants of the student, 
and dispense with all other references whatsoever. Not 
that even then, it would be desirable to abstain from 
ever opening a different compendium ; although un- 
11 



2 26 THE ART OF STUDY. 

doubtedly there would be the very minimum of 
necessity for doing so. Nevertheless, literature pre- 
sents few analogous instances. One of the great 
works of an original genius, like Aristotle, might, by 
profuse annotation, be made nearly sufficing ; but 
this is another way of reading by quotation a plurality 
of writers ; and it would be better still to peruse some 
of these in full, there being no need for studying 
them with the degree of intensity bestowed on a 
main work. 

The example, by pre-eminence, of one self-sufficing 
work is the Bible. Being the sole and ultimate 
authority of Christian doctrine, it holds a position 
entirely apart ; and, among Protestants at least, there 
is a becoming jealousy of allowing any extraneous 
writing to overbear its contents. Yet we are not to 
infer, as many have done practically, that no other 
work needs to be read in company with it. Granting 
that its genuine doctrines have been overlaid by 
subsequent accretions, the way to get clear of these 
is not to neglect the entire body of fathers, commen- 
tators, and theologians, and to give the whole attention 
to the scriptural text. Locke himself set an example 
of this attempt. He proposed, in his "Reasonableness 
of Christianity," to ascertain the exact meaning of 
the New Testament, by casting aside all the glosses 
of commentators and divines, and applying his own 
unassisted judgment to spell out its teachings. He 
did not disdain to use the lights of extraneous history, 
and the traditions of the heathen world ; he only 
refused to be bound by any of the artificial creeds 



LOCKE S TREATMENT OF THE BIBLE. 227 

and systems devised in later ages to embody the 
doctrines supposed to be found in the Bible. The 
fallacy of his position obviously was, that he could 
not strip himself of his education and acquired 
notions, the result of the teaching of the orthodox 
church. He seemed unconscious of the necessity of 
trying to make allowance for his unavoidable pre- 
possessions. In consequence, he simply fell into an 
old groove of received doctrines ; and these he 
handled under the set purpose of simplifying the 
fundamentals of Christianity to the utmost. Such 
purpose was not the result of his Bible study, but of 
his wish to overcome the political difficulties of the 
time. He found, by keeping close to the Gospels and 
by making proper selections from the Epistles, that the 
belief in Christ as the Messiah could be shown to be 
the central fact of the Christian faith ; that the other 
main doctrines followed out of this by a process of 
reasoning ; and that, as all minds might not perform 
the process alike, these doctrines could not be essential 
to the acceptance of Christianity, He got out of the 
difficulty of framing a creed, as many others have 
done, by simply using Scripture language, without 
subjecting it to any very strict definition ; certainly 
without the operation of stripping the meaning of its 
words, to see what it amounted to. That his short 
and easy method was not very successful, the history 
of the Deistical controversy sufficiently proves. The 
end in view would, in our time, be sought by an 
opposite course. Instead of disregarding commenta- 
tors, and the successions of creed embodiments, a 



228 THE ART OF STUDY- 

scholar of the present day would ascend through 
these to the original, and find out its meaning, after 
making allowance for all the tendencies that operated 
to give a bias to that meaning. As to putting us in the 
position of listening to the Bible authors at first hand, 
we should trust more to the erudition of a Pusey or an 
Ewald, than to the unassisted judgment of a Locke. 

II. " What constitutes the study of a book ?" Mere 
perusal at the average reading pace is not the way to 
imbibe the contents of any work of importance, 
especially if the subject is new and difficult. 

There are various methods in use among authori- 
tative guides. To revert to the Demosthenic tradi- 
tions: we find two modes indicated — namely, repeated 
copying, and committing to memory verbatim. A 
third is, making abstracts in writing. A fourth may 
be designated the Lockian method. Let us consider 
the respective merits of the four. 

I, Of copying a book literally through, there is this 
to be said, that it engages the attention upon every 
word, until the act of writing serves to impress the 
memory. But there are very important qualifications 
to be assigned in judging of the worth of the exercise. 
Observe what is the main design of the copyist. It 
is to produce a replica of an original upon paper. 
He cannot do this without a certain amount of 
attention to the original ; enough at least to enable 
him to put down the exact words in the copy ; and, 
by such attention, he is so far impressed with the 
matter, that a certain portion may remain in the 



STUDY BY LITERAL COPYING. 229 

memory. If, however, instead of the paper, he could 
write directly on the brain, he would be aiming 
straight at his object Now, experience shows that 
the making of a copy of any document is compatible 
with a very small amount of attention to the purport. 
The extreme case is the copying clerk. He can 
literally reproduce an original, with entire forget- 
fulness of what it is about If his eye takes a faithful 
note of the sequence of words, he may entirely 
neglect the meaning. In point of fact, he constantly 
does so. He remembers nobody's secrets ; and he 
cannot be counted on to check blunders that make 
nonsense of his text. Probably no one could go on 
copying for eight hours a day unless the strain of 
attention to the originals were at a minimum. I 
conceive, therefore, that copying habits arising from a 
certain amount of experience at the vocation, would 
be utterly fatal to the employment of the exercise as 
a means of study. It may be valuable to such as have 
seldom used their pen except in original composi- 
tion. Very probably, in school lessons, to write an 
exercise two or three times may be a help to the 
usual routine of saying off the book. 1 have heard 
experienced teachers testify to the good effects of the 
practice. Yet very little would turn the attention the 
wrong way. Even the requirement of neatness on 
the part of the master, or the pupil's own liking for 
it, would abate the desired impression. The multi- 
plied copying set as punishment might stamp a 
thing on the memory through disgust ; it might also 
engender the mechanical routine of the copyist. In 



230 THE ART OF STUDY. 

short, to sit down and copy a long work is about the 
last thing that I should dream of, as a means of 
study. To copy Thucydides eight times, as the 
tradition respecting Demosthenes goes, would be 
about the same as copying Gibbon three times : and 
who would undertake that ? 

2. Committing to memory verbatim, or nearly so. 
This too belongs to the same tradition regarding 
Demosthenes, and is probably as inaccurate as the 
other. Certainly the eight copyings would not suffice 
for having the whole by heart Excepting a profes- 
sional rhapsodist, or some one gifted with extraordi- 
nary powers of memory that would hardly be 
compatible with a great understanding, nobody would 
think of committing Thucydides to memory. That 
Demosthenes should be a perfect master both of the 
narrated facts, and of the sagacious theorisings of 
Thucydides in those facts, we may take for granted. 
And, farther, the orations delivered by opposing 
speakers in the great critical debates, might very well 
have been committed verbatim by a young orator ; 
many of them are masterpieces of oratory in every 
point of view. But the reason for getting them by 
heart does not apply to the general narrative. Even 
to imbibe the best qualities of the style of Thucydides 
would not require whole pages to be learnt verbatim : 
a much better way would readily occur to any intelli- 
gent man. 

In fact, there is no case where it is profitable to 
load the memory with a whole book, or with large 
portions of a book. There are many small portions 



/ 

COMMITTING TO MEMORY WORD FOR WORD. 23 1 

of every leading work that might be committed with 
advantage. Principal propositions ought to be re- 
tained to the letter. Passages, here and there, 
remarkable for compact force, for argumentative 
power, or elegant diction, might be read and re-read 
till they clung to the memory ; but this should be the 
consummation of a thorough and critical estimate of 
their merits. To commit to memory without thinking 
of the meaning is a senseless act ; and could not be 
ascribed to Demosthenes. At the stage when the 
young student is forming a style, he is assisted by 
laying up memoriter a number of passages of great 
authors ; but it is never necessary to go beyond select 
paragraphs. Detached sentences are valuable, and 
strain the memory least. Entire paragraphs have a far- 
ther value in impressing good paragraph connection ; 
but, to string a number of paragraphs together, or to 
learn whole chapters by memory, has nothing to re- 
commend it in the way of mental culture. 

There is a memory in extension that holds a long 
string of words and ideas together. Its value is to 
get readily at anything occurring in a certain train, as 
in a given book. It is the memory of easy reference. 
There is also a memory of intension, that takes a 
strong grasp of brief expressions and thoughts, and 
brings them out for use, on the slightest relevancy. 
The two modes interfere with each other's develop- 
ment ; we cannot be great in both ; while, for original 
force, the second is worth the most: it extracts and 
resets gems to tesselate our future structures ; it con- 
stitutes depth as against fluency. 



232 THE ART OF STUDY. 

To commit poetical passages to memory is a valu- 
able contribution to our stock of material for emotional 
resuscitation in after years. It also aids in adorning 
our style, even although we may not aspire to com- 
pose in poetry. But the burden of holding the con- 
nection of a long poem should be eschewed. Children 
can readily learn a short psalm or hymn, and can 
retain it in permanence; but to repeat the 119th 
psalm from the beginning is the mere tour-de-force of 
a strong natural memory, and a waste of power ; just 
as much as committing an entire book of the iEneid 
or of Paradise Lost. 

3. Making Abstracts. — This is the plan of studying 
that most advances our intelligent comprehension of 
any work of difficulty, and also impresses it on the 
memory in the best form. But there are many ways 
of doing it ; and beginners, from the very fact that 
they are beginners, are not competent to choose 
the best If a book has an obvious and methodical 
plan in itself, the reader can follow that plan, 
taking down the leading positions, selecting some 
of the chief examples or illustrations, giving short 
headings of chapters and paragraphs, and thus 
making a synopsis, or full table of contents. All 
this is useful. The memory is much better im- 
pressed through the exertion of picking, choosing, 
and condensing, than by copying verbatim ; and the 
plan or evolution of the whole is more fully compre- 
hended. But, if a work does not easily lend itself to a 
methodical abstract, the task of the beginner is much 



MAKING ABSTRACTS. 233 

harder. To abstract the treatises of Aristotle was 
fitting employment for Hobbes. The "Wealth of 
Nations " is not easy to abstract ; but, at the present 
day, it would not be chosen as the Text-book-in-chief 
for Political Economy : as a third or fourth work to 
be perused at a reading pace, it would have its proper 
effect. The best studious exercise upon it would be 
to mark the agreements and disagreements with the 
newer authority, the weak and strong points of the 
exposition, and the perennial force of a certain num- 
ber of the propositions and examples. Many parts 
could be skipped entirely as not even repaying his- 
torical study. Yet, as the work of a great and 
original mind, its interest is perennial. 

To go back once more to the example of Thucy- 
dides. Setting aside, from intrinsic improbability, 
both the traditions — the copyings, and the committal 
to memory verbatim, — we can easily see what Demos- 
thenes could find in the work, and how he could 
make the most of it. The narrative or story could be 
indelibly fixed in his memory by a few perusals, and, 
if need be, by a full chronology drawn up by his own 
hand. The speeches could be committed in whole or 
in part, for their arguments and language , and a 
minute study could be made of the turns of expres- 
sion, as they seemed to be either meritorious or 
defective. The young orator had already studied the 
more finished styles of Isocrates, Lysias, Isseus, and 
Plato, and could make comparisons between their 
forms and the peculiarities of Thucydides, which be- 
longed to an earlier age. This, however, was a 



234 THE ART OF STUDY. 

discipline altogether apart, and had nothing to do 
with copying, committing, or abstracting. It involved 
one exercise more or less allied to the last, namely, 
making changes upon an author > according to one's best 
ideal at the time : changes, if possible, for the better, 
but perhaps not ; still requiring, however, an effort of 
mind, and so far favourable to culture. 

Every one's first attempts at abstracting must be 
very bad. There is no more opportune occasion for 
the assistance of a tutor or intelligent monitor, than to 
revise an abstract. The weaknesses of a beginner are 
apparent at a glance ; even better than by a viva voce 
interrogation. Useful abstracting comes at a late 
stage of study, when one or two subjects have been 
pretty well mastered. It is then that the pupil can 
best overtake more advanced works on the subjects 
already commenced, or can enter upon an entirely 
new department, in the light of previous acquisitions. 

Any work that deserves thorough study deserves 
the labour of making an abstract ; without which, 
indeed, the study is not thorough. It is quite possible 
to read so as to comprehend the drift of a book, and 
yet forget it entirely. The point for us to consider is 
— Are we likely to want any portion of it afterwards ? 
If we can fix upon the parts most likely to be useful, 
we either copy or abstract these, or preserve a reference 
so as to turn them up when wanted. In the case of 
a work, containing a. mass of new and valuable 
materials, such as we wish to incorporate with our 
intellectual structure, we must act the part of the 
beginner in a new field, and make an abstract on the 



VARIOUS MODES OF ABSTRACTING. 235 

most approved plan : that is, by such changes as shall 
at once preserve the author's ideas, and intersperse 
them with our own. There is an ideal balance of two 
opposing tendencies : one to take down the writer too 
literally, which fails to impress the meaning ; the other 
to accommodate him too much to our own language 
and thinking, in which case, we shall remember more, 
but it will be remembering ourselves and not him. 
He that can hit the just mean between these extremes 
is the perfect student. 

There are easier modes of abstracting, such as serve 
many useful purposes, although not sufficient for the 
mastery of a leading Text-book, or even of a second 
or third in a new subject. We may pencil on the 
margin, or underscore, all the leading propositions, and 
the typical examples. In a well-composed scientific 
manual, the proceeding is too obvious to be impres- 
sive. Very often, however, the main points are not 
given in the most methodical way, but have to be 
searched out by carefully scanning each paragraph. 
This is an exercise that both instructs and impresses 
us ; it is the kind of change that calls our faculties 
into play, and gives us a better hold of an author, 
without superseding him. 

A Table of Contents carefully examined is favour- 
able to a comprehensive view of the whole ; and, this 
attained, the details are remembered in the best pos- 
sible way, that is, by taking their place in the scheme. 
Any other form of recollection is of the desultory 
kind. 



236 THE ART OF STUDY. 

4. Let us next glance at Locke's method of reading, 
which is unique and original, like the man himself. 
It is given with much iteration in his Conduct of the 
Understanding, but comes in substance to this : — 

We are to fix in the mind the author's ideas, 
stripped of his words ; to distinguish between such 
ideas as are pertinent to the subject, and such as are 
not ; to keep the precise question steadily before our 
minds ; to appreciate the bearing of the arguments ; 
and, finally, to see what the question bottoms upon, 
or what are the fundamental verities or assump- 
tions underneath. 

All this is very thorough in its way ; but, in the 
first place, it applies chiefly to argumentative works, 
and, in the second place, it is entirely beyond the 
powers of ordinary students. Such an examination 
of an author as Locke contemplates is not seen many 
times in a generation. His own controversies give 
but indifferent examples of it ; several of Bentham's 
works and a few of John Mill's polemical articles 
also 'give an idea of thorough handling ; but it is not 
so properly a studious effort, as the consummated 
product of a highly logical discipline, and is within 
the reach of only a small elect number. 

Locke would have been more intelligible, if, instead 
of telling us to strip an author's meaning of the words, 
he had impressed strongly the necessity of defining 
all leading terms ; and of making sure that each was 
always used in the same meaning. While, in order 
to veracious conclusions, it is necessary that every 
matter of fact should be truly given, it is equally 



LOCKE'S RECOMMENDATIONS. 237 

necessary that the language should be free from 
ambiguity. If an author uses the word " law," at one 
time as an enactment by some authority, and at 
another time, as a sequence in the order of nature, he 
is sure to land us in fallacy and confusion, as Butler 
did in explaining the Divine government. The remedy 
is, not to perform the operation of separating the 
meaning entirely from the language, but to vary 
the language, so as to substitute terms that have no 
ambiguity. " Law " is equivocal ; " social enactment," 
and " order of nature," are both unequivocal ; and 
when one is chosen, and adhered to, the confusion is 
at an end. 

The mere art of study is no preparation for such a 
task. It demands a very advanced condition of 
knowledge on the particular subject, as well as a 
logical habit of mind, however acquired ; and to 
include it in a practical essay on the Conduct of the 
Understanding is to overstep the limits of the subject. 

As our present head represents the very pith and 
marrow of the art of study, we may dwell a little 
longer on the process of changing the form of an 
author, whether by condensing, expanding, varying the 
expression, slteing the order, selecting, and rejecting, 
— or by any other known device. Worst of all is 
change for the mere sake of change; it is simply better 
than literal copying. But, to rise above it, needs a 
sense of Form already attained. According as this 
sense is developed, the exercise of altering or amend- 
ing is more and more profitable. Consequently, 



238 THE ART OF STUDY. 

there should be an express application of the mind 
to the attainment of form ; and particular works 
pre-eminent for that quality should be sought out 
and read. "Form" is doubtless a wide word, and com- 
prises both the logical or pervading method of a work, 
and the expression or dress throughout. Method by 
itself can be soonest acquired because it turns on a 
small number of points ; language is a multifarious 
acquirement, and can hardly be forced, although it 
will come eventually by due application. 

To show what is meant by learning Form, with a 
view to the more effectual study of subject-matter, I 
will take the example of a work on the Practice of 
Medicine ; in which the idea is to describe Diseases 
seriatim, with their treatment or cures. At the 
present day, this subject possesses method or form : 
there~ is a systematic classification of diseased pro- 
cesses and diseases ; also, a regular plan of setting 
forth the specific marks of each disease, its diagnosis, 
and, finally, its remedies. There are more and less 
perfect models of the methodical element; while there 
are differences among authors in the fulness of the 
detailed information. There is, besides, a Logic of 
Medicine, representing the absolute form, in a kind of 
logical synopsis, by which it is more easily compre- 
hended in the first instance : not to mention the 
general body of the Logic of the Inductive Sciences, 
of which medicine is one. Now, undoubtedly, the 
best work to begin with — the Text-book-in-chief — ■ 
would be one where Form is in its highest perfection ; 
the amount of matter being of less consequence. In 



EXAMPLE FROM PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. 239 

a subject of great complication, and vast detail, the 
student cannot too soon get possession of the best 
method or form of arrangement. When a work of 
this character is before him, he is to read and re-read 
it, till the form becomes strongly apparent ; he is to 
compare one part with another, to see how the author 
adheres to his own pervading method ; he should, if 
possible, make a synopsis of the plan in itself, dis- 
entangling it from the applications, for greater clear- 
ness. The scheme of a medical work, for example, 
comprises the Classification of Diseases, the parting 
off of Diseased Processes — Fever, Inflammation, &c. — 
from Diseases properly so called ; the modes of defin- 
ing Disease ; the separation of defining marks, from 
predications, and so on : all involved in a strict Logic 
of Disease. Armed with these logical or methodical 
preliminaries, the student next attacks one of the 
extended treatises on the Practice of Medicine. He 
is now prepared to work the process of abstracting to 
the utmost advantage, both for clearness of under- 
standing, and for impressing the memory. As in 
such a vast subject, no one author is deemed adequate 
to a full exposition, and as, moreover, a great portion 
of the information occurs, apart from systems, in 
detached memoirs or monographs, — the only mode 
of unifying and holding together the aggregate, is to 
reduce all the statements to a common form and 
order, by help of the pre-acquired plan. The pro- 
gress of study may amend the plan, as well as add to 
the particular information ; but absolute perfection in 
the scheme is not so essential as strict adherence to 



240 THE ART OF STUDY. 

it through all the details. To work without a plan 
at all, is not merely to tax the memory beyond its 
powers, but probably also to misconceive and jumble 
the facts. 

To enhance the illustration of the two main heads 
of the Art of Study, I will so far deviate from the idea 
of the essay, as to take up a special branch of educa- 
tion, which, more than any other, has been reduced to 
form and rule, I mean the great accomplishment of 
Oratory, or the Art of Persuasion. The practical 
Science of Rhetoric, cultivated both by ancients and 
by moderns, has especially occupied itself with direc- 
tions for acquiring this great engine of influencing 
mankind. 

It was emphatically averred by the ancient teachers 
of the Oratorical art, that it must be grounded on a 
wide basis of general information. I do not here 
discuss the exact scope of this preparatory study, as 
my purpose is to narrow the illustration to what is 
special to the faculty of persuasion. I must even 
omit all those points relating to delivery or elocution, 
on which so much depends ; and also the considera- 
tion of how to attain readiness or fluency in spoken 
address, except in so far as that follows from abundant 
oratorical resources. We thus sink the difference be- 
tween spoken oratory, and persuasion through the 
press. 

Even as thus limited, oratory is still too wide for a 
pointed illustration : and, so, I propose farther to 
confine my references to the department of Political 



EXAMPLE FROM THE ART OF ORATORY. 24 1 

Oratory; coupling with that, however, the Forensic 
branch — -which has much in common with the other, 
and has given birth to some of our most splendid 
examples of the art of persuasion. 

While declining to enter on the wide field of the 
general education of the orator, I may not improperly 
advert to the more immediate preparation for the 
political orator, by a familiar acquaintance with His- 
tory and Political Philosophy, howsoever obtained. 
Then, on the other hand, the course here to be chalked 
out assumes a considerable proficiency in language or 
expression. The special education will incidentally 
improve both these accomplishments, but must not be 
relied on for creating them, or for causing a marked 
advance in either. The effect to be looked for is 
rather to give them direction for the special end. 

These things premised, the line of proceeding 
manifestly is to study the choicest examples of the 
oratorical art, according to the methods already laid 
down, with due adaptation to the peculiarities of the 
case. 

Now, we have not, as in a Science, two or three sys- 
tematic works, one of which is to be chosen as a chief, 
to be followed by a reference more or less to the others. 
Our material is a long series of detached orations ; 
from these we must make a selection at starting, and 
such selection, which may comprise ten or twenty 
or more, will have to be treated with the intense 
single-minded devotion that we hitherto limited to a 
single work. Repeated perusal, with a process of 
abstracting to be described presently, must be be 



242 THE ART OF STUDY. 

stowed upon the chosen examples, before embarking, 
as will be necessary, upon the wide field of miscel- 
laneous oratory. 

No doubt, an oratorical education could be grounded 
in a general and equal study of the orators at large, 
taking the ancients either first or last, according to 
fancy. Probably the greater number of students 
have fallen into this apparently obvious course. Our 
present contention is, that it is better to make a 
thorough study of a proper selection of the greatest 
speeches, together with the most persuasive unspoken 
compositions. This, however, is not all. We are 
following the wisdom of the ancients, in insisting on 
the farther expedient of proceeding to the study 
of the great examples by the aid of an oratorical 
scheme. At a very early stage of Oratory in Greece, 
its methods began to be studied, and, in the education 
of the orator, these methods were made to accompany 
the study of exemplary speeches. 

The principles of Rhetoric at large, and of the 
Persuasive art in particular, have been elaborated by 
successive stages, and are now in a tolerable state 
of advancement. The learner will choose the scheme 
that is judged best, and will endeavour to master it 
provisionally, before entering on the oratorical models; 
holding it open to amendment from time to time, as 
his education goes on. The scheme and the examples 
mutually act and re-act : the better the scheme, the 
more rapidly will the examples fructify ; and the 
scheme will, in its turn, profit by the mastery of the 
details. 



NECESSITY OF AN ORATORICAL ANALYSIS. 243 

One great use of an oratorical analysis, as supplied 
by the teachers of Rhetoric, is to part off the different 
merits of a perfect oration ; and to show which are 
to be extracted from the various exemplary orators. 
One man excels in forcible arguments, another in the 
lucid array of facts ; one is impressive and impas- 
sioned, another is quiet but circumspect. Now, the 
benefit of studying on principle, instead of working 
at random, is, that we concentrate attention on each 
one's strong points, and disregard the rest. But it 
needs a preparatory analysis, in order to make the 
discrimination. All that the uninstructed reader or 
hearer of a great oration knows is, that the oration is 
great : this may be enough for the persons to be 
moved ; it is insufficient for an oratorical disciple. 

In the hazardous task of pursuing the illustration 
by naming the examples of oratory most suitable to 
commence with, I shall pass over living men, and 
choose from the past orators of our own country. 
Without discussing minutely the respective merits of 
individuals, I am safe in selecting, as in every way 
suitable for our purpose, Burke, Fox, Erskine, Can- 
ning, Brougham, and Macaulay. Burke's Speeches 
on America ; Fox on the Westminster Scrutiny ; 
Erskine on Stockdale, and on Hardy, Tooke, &c. ; 
Canning on the Slave Trade ; Brougham, Lyndhurst, 
and Denman in the Queen's Trial ; Macaulay on the 
Reform Bill, — would comprise, in a moderate compass, 
a considerable range of oratorical excellence. I doubt 
if any member of the list would be more suitable 
for a beginning than Macaulay's Reform Speeches. 



244 THE ART OF STUDY. 

These are no mere displays of a brilliant imagination : 
they are known to have influenced thousands of minds 
otherwise averse to political change. The reader finds 
in them an immense repository of historical facts as 
well as of doctrines ; but facts and doctrines, by them- 
selves, do not make oratory. It is the use made of 
these, that gives us the instruction we are now in 
quest of. In a first or second reading, however, matter 
and form equally captivate the mind. It would be 
impossible, at that early stage, to make an abstract 
such as would separate the oratorical from the non- 
oratorical merits. Only when, by help of our scheme, 
we have made a critical distinction between the two 
kinds of excellence, are we able to arrive at an ap- 
proach to a pure oratorical lesson ; and, for a long 
time, we shall fail to make the desired isolation. We 
have to learn not to expect too much from any one 
speech : to pass over in Macaulay, what is more con- 
spicuously shown, say in Fox, or in Erskine. If our 
political and historical education has made some pro- 
gress, the mere thoughts and facts do not detain us ; 
their employment for the end of persuasion is what we 
have to take account of. 

It is impossible here to indicate, except in a very- 
general way, the successive steps of the operation. 
The one summary consideration in the Rhetoric of 
Oratory, from which flows the entire array of details, 
is the regard to the dispositions and state of mind of 
the audience ; the presenting of topics and considera- 
tions that chime in with these dispositions, and the 
avoiding of everything that would .conflict with them. 



COMPREHENSIVE PRINCIPLE OF ORATORY. 245 

To grasp this comprehensive view, and to follow it out 
in some of the chief circumstantials of persuasive 
address — the leading forms of argument, and the 
appeals to the more prominent feelings, — would soon 
provide a touchstone to a great oration, and lead us to 
distinguish the materials of oratory from the use made 
of them. 

Take the circumstance of negative tact ; by which 
is meant the careful avoidance of whatever might 
grate on the minds of those addressed. Forensic 
oratory in general, and the oratory of Parliamentary 
leaders in particular, will show this in perfection ; and, 
for a first study of it, there is probably nothing to 
surpass the Erskine Speeches above cited. It could, 
however, be found in Macaulay ; although, in a dif- 
ferent proportion to the other merits. 

The Macaulay Speeches have the abundance of 
matter, and the powers of style, that minister to 
oratory, although not constituting its distinctive fea- 
ture. In these speeches, we may note how he guages 
the minds of the men of rank and property, in and 
out of Parliament, who constituted the opposition to 
Reform ; how tenderly he deals with their prejudices 
and class interests ; how he shapes and adduces his 
arguments so as to gain those very feelings to the 
side he advocates ; how he brings his accumulated 
store of historical illustrations to his aid, under the 
guidance of both the positive and the negative tact 
of the orator ; saying everything to gain, and nothing 
to alienate the dispositions that he has carefully 
measured. 



246 THE ART OF STUDY. 

After Erskine and Macaulay have yielded their first 
contribution to the oratorical student, he could turn 
with profit to Burke, who has the materials of oratory 
in the same high order as Macaulay, but who in the 
employment of them so often miscarries — sometimes 
partially, at other times wholly. It then becomes 
an exercise to distinguish his successes from his 
failures ; to resolve these into their elementary merits 
and defects, according to the oratorical scheme. The 
close study of one or two orations is still the prefer- 
able course ; and the most profitable transition from 
the Burke sample is to the selected speech or speeches 
of some other orator as Canning or Brougham. All 
the time, the pupil must be enlarging and improving 
his analytic scheme, which is the means of keeping 
his mind to the point in hand, amid the distraction of 
the orator's gorgeous material. 

The subsequent stages of oratorical study are much 
plainer than the commencement. A time comes when 
the pupil will roam freely over the great field of 
oratory, modern and ancient, knowing more and more 
exactly what to appropriate and what to neglect. He 
will be quite aware of the necessity of rivalling the 
great masters in resources of knowledge on the one 
hand, and of style on the other ; but he will look for 
these elsewhere, as well as in the professed orators. 

Moreover, as the persuasive art is exemplified in 
men that have never been public speakers, the oratori- 
cal pupil will make a selection from the most influen- 
tial of this class. He will find, for example, in the 
argumentative treatises of Johnson, in the Letters of 



EXAMPLES OF PERSUASIVE ART. 247 

Junius, in the writings of Godwin, in Sydney Smith, 
in Bentham, in Cobbett, in Robert Hall, in Fon- 
blanque, in J. S. Mill, in Whately, and a host besides, 
the exemplification of oratorical merits, together with 
materials that are of value. It is understood, how- 
ever, that the search for materials and the acquisition 
of oratorical form, are not made to advantage on the 
same lines, and, for this and other reasons, should 
not go together. 

The extreme test of the principle of concentration 
as against equal application, is the acquirement of 
Style, or the extending of our resources of diction and 
expression in all its particulars. Being a matter of 
endless minute details, we may feel ourselves at a loss 
to compass it by the intensive study of a narrow and 
select example. Still, with due allowance for the 
speciality of the case, the principle will still be found 
applicable. We should, however, carry along with us, 
the maxim exemplified under oratory, of separating in 
our study, as far as may be, the style from the matter. 
We begin by choosing a treatise of some great master. 
We may then operate either (i) by simple reading 
and re-reading, or (2) by committing portions to 
memory verbatim, or (3), best of all, by making some 
changes according to an already acquired ideal of 
good composition. This too shows the great import- 
ance of attaining as early as possible some regulating 
principles of goodness of style : the action and re- 
action of these, on the most exemplary authors, con- 
stitute our progress in the art, and, in the quickest 
way, store the memory with the resources of good 
expression. 



248 THE ART OF STUDY. 

III. The head just now finished includes really 
by far the greatest portion of the economy of study. 
There are various other devices of importance in their 
way, but much less liable to error in practice. Of 
these, a leading place may be assigned to the best 
modes of Distributing the Attention in reading. Such 
questions as the following present themselves for con- 
sideration to the earnest student. How many distinct 
studies can be carried on together ? What interval 
should be allowed in passing from one to another? 
How much time should be given to the art of reading, 
and how much to subsequent meditating or rumi- 
nating on what has been read ? These points are 
all susceptible of being determined, within moderate 
limits of error. As to the first, the remark was 
made by Quintilian, that, in youth, we can most 
easily pass from one study to another. The reason 
of this, however, is, that youth does not take very 
seriously to any study. When a special study becomes 
engrossing, the alternatives must rather be recreative 
than acquisitive ; not much progress being made in 
what is slighted, or left over to the exhaustion 
caused by attention to the favourite topic. A more 
precise answer can be made to the second and 
third queries, namely, as to an interval for recall and 
meditation, after putting down a book, and before 
turning the attention into other channels. There is 
a very clear principle of economy here. We should 
save as far as possible the fatigue of the reading 
process, or make a given amount of attention to the 
printed page yield the greatest impression on the 



ECONOMIES OF BOOK READING. 249 

memory. This is done by the exercise of recalling 
without the book ; an advantage that we do not 
possess in listening to a lecture, until the whole is 
finished, when we have too much to recall. To 
hurry from book to book is to gain stimulation at 
the cost of acquisition. 

I have alluded to the case of an engrossing subject, 
which starves all accompanying studies. There are but 
two ways of obviating the evil, if it be an evil ; which 
it indeed becomes, when the alternative demands also 
are legitimate. The one is peremptorily to limit the 
time given to it daily, so as to rescue some portion of 
the strength for other topics. The other is to intermit 
it wholly for a certain period, and let other subjects 
have their swing. In advancing life, and when our 
studious leisure is only what is left from professional 
occupation, two different studies can hardly go on 
together. The alternative of a single study needs to 
be purely recreative. 

One other point may be noted under this head. In 

the application to a book of importance and difficulty, 

there are two ways of going to work : to move on 

slowly, and master as we go ; or to move on quickly to 

the end, and begin again. There is most to be said 

for the first method, although distinguished men have 

worked upon the other. The freshness of the matter 

is taken off by a single reading ; the re-reading is so 

much flatter in point of interest. Moreover, there is 

a great satisfaction in making our footing sure at each 

step, as well as in finishing the task when the first 

perusal is completed. We cannot well dispense with 
12 



250 THE ART OF STUDY. 

re-reading, but it need not extend to the whole; marked 
passages should show where the comprehension and 
mastery are still lagging. 

IV. Another topic is Desultory Reading. This is 
the whole of the reading of the unstudious mass ; it 
is but a part of the reading of the true student. It 
may mean, for one thing, jumping from book to book, 
perhaps reading no one through, except for pure 
amusement. It may also include the reading of 
periodicals, where no one subject is treated at any 
length. As a general rule, such reading does not 
give us new foundations, or constitute the point of 
departure of a fresh department of knowledge ; yet 
the amount of labour and thought bestowed upon 
articles in periodicals, may render them efficacious in 
adding to a previous stock of materials, or in correct- 
ing imperfect views. The truth is, that to the studious 
man, the desultory is not desultory. The only differ- 
ence with him is that he has two attitudes that he 
may assume — the severe and the easy-going ; the one 
is most associated with systematic works on leading 
subjects ; the other with short essays, periodicals, 
newspapers, and conversation. In this last attitude, 
which is reserved for hours of relaxation, he skips 
matters of difficulty, and absorbs scattered and inte- 
resting particulars without expressly aiming at the 
solution of problems or the discussion of abstract 
principles. There is no reason why an essay in a 
periodical, a pamphlet, or a speech in Parliament, 
may not take a first place in anyone's education. All 



DESULTORY READING. 25 1 

the labour and resource that go to form a work of 
magnitude may be concentrated in any one of these. 
Still, they are presented in the form that we are accus- 
tomed to associate with our desultory work, and our 
times of relaxation ; and so, they seldom produce in 
the minds of readers the effect that they are capable 
of producing. The thorough student will not fail to 
extract materials from one and all of them, but even 
he will scarcely choose from such sources the text for 
the commencement of a new study. 

The desultory is not a bad way of increasing our re- 
sources of expression. Although there be a systematic 
and a best mode of acquiring language, there is also 
an inferior, yet not ineffective mode; namely, reading 
copiously whatever authors have at once a good style 
and a sustaining interest. Hence, for this purpose, 
shifting from book to book, taking up short and light 
compositions, may be of considerable value ; anything 
is better than not reading at all, or than reading com- 
positions inferior in point of style. The desultory 
man will not be without a certain flow of language as 
well as a command of ideas ; notwithstanding which, 
he will never be confounded with the studious man. 

V. A fifth point is the proportion of book-reading 
to Observation of the facts at first hand. From want 
of opportunity, or from disinclination, many persons 
have all their information on certain subjects cast in 
the bookish mould, and do not fully conceive the 
particular facts as these strike the mind in their own 
character. A reader of History, with no experience 



252 THE ART OF STUDY. 

of affairs, is likely to have imperfect bookish notions ; 
just as a man of affairs, not a reader, is subject to 
narrowness of another kind. It was remarked by Sir 
G. Cornewall Lewis, that the German historians of the 
Athenian Democracy write like men that never had 
any actual experience of popular assemblies. A 
lawyer must be equally versed in principles and in 
cases as heard in court : this is a type of knowledge 
generally. In the Natural History Sciences, observa- 
tion and reading go hand in hand from the first. In 
the science of the Human Mind, there are general 
doctrines, contrived to embrace the world of mental 
phenomena: the student may have to begin with these, 
and work upon them exclusively for a time, but, in the 
end, phenomena must be independently viewed by him 
in their naked character, as [exhibited directly in his 
own mind, and inferentially in the minds of those that 
fall under his observation. Book knowledge of Dis- 
ease has to be coupled with bed-side knowledge ; 
neither will take the place of the other. 

VI. I began by limiting the meaning of study to 
' the reading of books, and have reviewed the various 
points in the economy of this process. The other 
means of attaining, enlarging, deepening our know- 
ledge, namely, Observation of facts, Conversation, 
Disputation, Composition, have each an art of its own 
— especially Disputation, which has long been reduced 
to rule. Observation also admits of specific directions, 
but, in stating the necessity of combining observation 
with book theories and descriptions, I have assumed 
the knowledge of how to observe. 



AIDS OF CONVERSATION AND COMPOSITION. 253 

Of all the adjuncts of study, none is so familiar, so 
available, and, on the whole, so helpful, as Conversa- 
tion. The authors of Guides to Students, as Isaac 
Watts, give elaborate rules for carrying on conversa- 
tion, a good many of them being more moral than 
intellectual ; but an art of conversation would be very 
difficult to formulate ; it would take quite as long an 
essay as I have devoted to study, and even then would 
not follow half of the windings of the subject. The 
only notice of it that my plan requires, is such as I 
have already bestowed upon Observation : namely, to 
point out the advantage of combining a certain amount 
of reading with conversation ; a thing that almost 
everybody does according to their opportunities. To 
rehearse what we have read to some willing and sym- 
pathizing listener, is the best way of impressing the 
memory and of clearing up difficulties to the under- 
standing. It brings in the social stimulus, which ranks 
so high among human motives. It is a wholesome 
change of attitude ; relieving the fatigue of book-study, 
while adding to its fruitfulness. Even beginners in 
study are mutually helpful, by exchanging the results 
of their several book acquirements ; while it is pos- 
sible to raise conversation to the rank of a high art, 
both for intellectual improvement and for mutual 
delectation. I cannot say that the ideal is often rea- 
lized ; since two or more must combine to conversa- 
tion, and it is not often that the mutual action and 
re-action is perfectly adjusted for the highest effect. 

The last great adjunct of study is original Com- 
position, which also would need to be formulated 



254 THE ART OF STUDY. 

distinct from the theory of book-study. Viewed in 
the same way as we have viewed the other collateral 
exercises, one can pronounce it too an invaluable 
adjunct to book-reading', as well as an end in itself; 
it is a variation of effort that diverts the mental 
strain, and re-acts powerfully upon the extrac- 
tion of nutriment from books. Besides the pride of 
achievement, it evokes the social stimulus with the 
highest effect ; our compositions being usually in- 
tended for some listeners. But, when to begin the 
work of original composition, as distinct from the 
written exercises upon books, in the way of abstract- 
ing, amending, and the rest ; what forms it should 
assume at the outset, and by what steps it should 
gradually ascend to the culminating effects of the 
art, — would all admit of expansion and discussion 
as an altogether separate theme. Enough to remark 
here, that a course of book-reading without attempts 
at original composition is as faulty an extreme, as to 
begin and carry on writing upon a stinted basis of 
reading. The thorough student, as concerned in my 
present essay, carrying on book-study in the manner 
I have sketched, will almost infallibly end, at the 
proper time, in a self-thinker, and a self-originator. 
An adequate familiarity with the great writers of the 
past both checks presumptuous or hasty efforts of re- 
production, and encourages modest attempts of our 
own as we feel ourselves becoming gradually invigo- 
rated through the combined influence of all the various 
modes of well-directed study. 



VIII. 

RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 



RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

Every man has an interest in arriving at truth for 
himself. However useful it may be to mislead other 
people, however sweet to look down from a height on 
the erring throng beneath, it is neither useful nor 
sweet to be ourselves at sea without a compass. We 
may not care to walk by the light we have, but we 
do not choose to exchange it for darkness. 

This reflection is most obvious with reference to the 
order of Nature. Our life depends on adapting means 
to ends ; which supposes that we know cause and 
effect in the world around us. A long story is cut 
short by the adage, " Knowledge is power " ; other- 
wise rendered, " Truth is bliss ". 

The bearing of truth is free from all doubt when 
the problem is, how to gain certain ends — how to be 
fed, how to get from one place to another, how to 
cure disease. A new case is presented by the choice 
of ends. The tyrannical French minister, when ap- 
pealed to by a starving peasantry in the terms, " We 
must live," replied, " I do not see the necessity ". 
There was here no question of true and false, no 
problem for science to solve. It was a question of 
ends, and could not be reargued. The only possible 
retort was to ask, " What does your Excellency consider 



258 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

a necessity?" If the reply were, "That I and my 
King may rule France and be happy," then might the 
starving wretches find some aid from a political 
scientist who could show that, in the order of nature, 
ruler and people must stand or fall together. So, it 
is no question of true or false in the order of nature, 
whether I shall adopt, as the end of life, my own 
gratification purely, the good of others purely, or part 
of both. In like manner the Benthamite, who pro- 
pounds happiness as the general end of human society, 
cannot prove this, as Newton could prove that gravity 
follows the inverse square of the distance ; nor can 
his position be impugned in the way that Newton 
impugned, the vortices of Descartes, by showing 
that they were at variance with fact. 

There is a third case. Assertions are made out of 
the sphere of the sensible world, and beyond the 
reach of verification by the methods of science 
There is a region of the supersensible or supernatural 
where cause and effect may be affirmed and human 
interests involved, but where we cannot supply the 
same evidence or the same confutation as in sublunary 
knowledge. That all human beings shall have an 
existence after death is matter of truth or falsehood, 
but the evidence is of a kind that would not be 
adduced for proving that a caterpillar becomes a 
butterfly or that a seed turns to a plant The reason- 
ing employed, no doubt, makes references to facts of 
the order of nature ; but it is circuitous and analogical, 
and is admitted merely because better cannot be 
had. 



THREE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF ASSERTIONS. 259 

The peculiarity of this last class of affirmations is 
that they give great room for the indulgence of our 
likings. So little being fixed with any precision, we 
can shape our beliefs to please ourselves. Even as 
regards the sensible world, we can sometimes accom- 
modate our views to what we wish, as when we 
assume that our favourite foods and stimulants are 
wholesome ; but such license soon meets with checks 
in the physical sphere, while there are no such checks 
in the realms of the superphysical. 

Now, in all these three departments of opinion, the 
interest of mankind lies in obtaining the best views 
that can possibly be obtained. As regards the first 
and third — the region of true and false, one in the 
sensible, the other in the supersensible world — we are 
clearly interested in getting the truth. As regards 
the second — the region of ends — if there be one class 
of ends preferable to another, we should find out that 
class. 

The only doubt that can arise anywhere is, whether 
in the third case — the case of the supernatural, — truth 
is of the same consequence to us. Such a doubt, 
however, begs the whole question at issue. If the 
truth be of no consequence here, it is because we shall 
never be landed in any reality corresponding to what 
is declared : that the nature of the future life is purely 
imaginary and not to be converted into fact ; in 
other words, that there is no future life § that there is 
merely a land of dreams and fiction, which can never 
be proved true and never proved false. It would then 
be a projection of thought from the present life, and 



260 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

would cease with that life. All that people could claim 
in the matter would be the liberty of imagination ; 
and this being so, we are not to be committed to any 
one form. In short, we are to picture what we please 
in a world that cannot be made out to exist. The 
point is not, to be true or false ; it is, to be well or ill 
imagined. 

What, then, is to be the criterion of proper or 
improper imagination ? On what grounds are we to 
make our preference between the different schemes of 
the supersensible world ? Is each one of us to be 
free to imagine for ourselves, or are we to submit to 
the dictation of others ? These questions lead up to 
another. How far are the interests of the present life 
concerned in the form given to our conceptions of a 
future life? 

It would seem to be an unanswerable assumption 
that, in all the three situations above supposed, we 
should do the very best that the case admits of. In 
the order of nature we should get, as far as possible, 
the truth and the whole truth ; in the choice of ends 
for this life we should embrace the best ends ; in the 
shaping of another life we should be free to follow out 
whatever may be the course suitable to the opera- 
tion. 

The means for arriving at truth in the order of 
nature is an active search according to certain well- 
known methods. It farther involves the negative con- 
dition of perfect freedom to canvass, to controvert, or to 
refute, every received doctrine or opinion. There is no 



EARLY SOURCES OF INTOLERANCE. 26 1 

use in going after new facts, or in rising to new genera- 
lities, if we are not to be allowed to displace errors. 
This is now conceded, except at the points of contact 
of the natural and the supernatural. In spite of the 
wide separation of the two worlds — the world of fact 
and the world of imagination, — we cannot conceive the 
second except in terms of the first ; and if the shaping 
of the supernatural acquires fixity and consecration, 
the natural facts made use ot in the fabric acquire a 
corresponding fixity, even although the rendering is 
found to be inaccurate. The prevailing conception 
of a future life needs a view of the separate and 
independent subsistence of the mental powers of man, 
very difficult to reconcile with present knowledge. 

The growth of intolerance is quite explicable, but 
the explanation is not necessarily a justification. 
Although every division of the human family must 
have passed through many social phases, and must 
therefore have experienced revolutionary shocks, yet 
the rule of man's existence has been a rigorous fixity 
of institutions, with a hatred of change. Innovations, 
when not the effect of conquest, would be made under 
the pressure of some great crisis, or some tremendous 
difficulty that could not otherwise be met. The idea 
of individuals being allowed, in quiet times, to propose 
alterations in government, in religion, in morals, or 
even in the common arts of life, was thought of only 
to be stamped out. There was a step in advance of 
the ancient and habitual order of things, when an 
innovating citizen was permitted to make his proposal 



262 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

to the assembled tribe, with a rope about his neck, to 
be drawn tight if he failed to convince his audience. 
This might make men think twice before advancing 
new views, but it was not an entire suppression of them. 

The first introduction of the great religions of the 
world would in each case afford an interesting study 
of the difficulties of change and of the modes of sur- 
mounting these difficulties. There must always have 
concurred at least two things, — general uneasiness or 
discontent from some cause or other ; and the moral 
or intellectual ascendency of some one man, whose 
views, although original, were yet of a kind to be 
finally accepted by the people. These conditions are 
equally shown in political changes, and are histori- 
cally illustrated in many notable instances. It is 
enough to cite the Greek legislation of Lycurgus and 
of Solon. 

Such changes are the exceptions in human affairs ; 
they occur only at great intervals. In the ordinary 
course of societies, the governing powers not merely 
adhere to what is established, but forbid under severe 
penalties the very suggestion of change. The chronic 
misery of the race is compatible with unreasoning 
acquiescence in a state of things once established , 
incipient reformers are at once immolated pour en- 
courager les autres. It is the aim of governments to 
make themselves superfluously strong ; they take pre- 
cautions against unfavourable ideas no less than 
against open revolt. In this, they are seconded by 
the general community, which would make things too 



SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM POLITICS. 263 

It is said by the evolution or historical school of 
politicians, that this was all as it should be. The 
free permission to question the existing institutions, 
political and religious, would have been incompatible 
with stability. In early society more especially, reli- 
gion and morality were a part of civil government ; a 
dissenter in religion was the same thing as a rebel in 
politics ; the distinction between the civil and the 
religious could not yet be drawn. 

Without saying whether this was the case or not — 
for I should not like to commit myself to the posi- 
tion, " Whatever was, was right " at the time— I trust 
we are now far on the way to being agreed that the 
civil and the religious are no longer to be identified ; 
that the State, as a state, is not concerned to uphold 
any one form of religious belief. Modern civilized 
communities are believed capable of existing without 
an official religion ; the citizens being free to form 
themselves into self- governed religious bodies, as 
various as the prevailing modes of religious belief. It 
may be long ere this goal be fully reached ; but even 
the upholders of the present state religions admit that, 
supposing these were not in existence, nobody would 
now propose to institute them. 

The foregoing remarks may appear somewhat de- 
sultory, as well as too brief for the extent of the 
theme. They must be accepted, however, as an 
introduction to a more limited topic, which pre- 
supposes in some measure the general principle of 
toleration by the state of all forms of religious opinion. 



264 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

Whether with or without established religions, perfect 
freedom of dissent is now demanded, and, with some 
hankering reservations, pretty generally conceded. 
Individuals are allowed to congregate into religious 
societies, on the most various and opposite creeds. 

So far good. Yet there remains a difficulty. Long 
before the age of toleration, when each state had an 
established religion, the people in general formed their 
habits of religious observance in connection with the 
State Church — its doctrines, -its ritual, its buildings, 
and its sacred places. When disruption took place, 
the separatists formed themselves into societies on 
the original model, merely dropping the matters of 
disagreement. Fixity of creed and of ritual was still 
enacted ; the only remedy for dissatisfaction on either 
subject was to swarm afresh, and set up a new variety 
of doctrine or of ritual, to which a rigid adherence was 
still expected as a condition of membership. 

By this costly and troublesome process, Churches 
have been multiplied according to the changes of 
view among sections of the community. A certain 
energy of conviction has always been necessary to 
such a result. Equally great changes of opinion occur 
among members of the older Church communities, 
without inducing them to break with these ; so that 
nominal membership ceases to be a mark of real 
adhesion to the articles of belief. 

These few commonplaces are meant to introduce 
the enquiry — now a pressing one — whether, and how 
far, fixed creeds are desirable or expedient in religious 



EVILS OF PENAL RESTRAINT ON DISCUSSION. 265 

bodies generally ; no difference being made between 
state Churches and voluntary Churches. This is the 
question of Subscription to Articles by the clergy. 

Let us now review the evils attendant on subscrip- 
tion, and next consider the objections to its removal. 

In the first place, the process of restraining discus- 
sion by penal tests is inherently untenable, absurd, 
and fallacious. 

In support of this strong assertion, we have only 
to repeat, that every man has an interest in getting at 
the truth, and consequently in whatever promotes 
that end. We live by the truth ; error is death. To 
stand between a man and the attainment of truth, is 
to inflict an injury of incalculable amount. The 
circumstances wherein the prohibition of truth is 
desirable, must be extraordinary and altogether ex- 
ceptional. The few may have a self-interest in 
withholding truth from the many ; neither the few 
nor the many have an interest in its being withheld 
from themselves. Each one of us has the most direct 
concern in knowing on what plan this universe is 
constituted, what are its exact arrangements and 
laws. Whether for the present life, or for any other 
life, we must steer our course by our knowledge, and 
that knowledge needs to be true. Obstruction to the 
truth recoils upon the obstructors. To flee to the 
refuge of lies is not the greatest happiness of any- 
body. 

It has been maintained that there are illusions so 
beneficial as to be preferable to truth. Occasionally, 
in private life, we practise little deceptions upon indi- 



266 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

viduals when the truth would cause some great tem- 
porary mischief. This case need not be discussed. 
The important instance is in reference to religious 
belief. A benevolent Deity and a future life are so 
cheering and consoling, it is said, that they should be 
secured against challenge or criticism ; they ought 
not to be weakened by discussion. This, of course, 
assumes that these doctrines are unable to maintain 
themselves against opponents, that, with all their 
intrinsic charm (which nobody can be indifferent to), 
they would give way under a free handling. Such a 
confession is fatal. Men will go on cherishing pleas- 
ing illusions, but not such as need to be protected in 
order to exist. According to Plato, the belief in the 
goodness of the Deity was of so great importance 
that it was to be maintained by state penalties — 
about the worst way of making the belief efficacious 
for its end. What should we think of an Act passed 
to imprison whoever disputed the goodness of King 
Alfred, the Man of Ross, or Howard ? 

Granting that certain illusions are highly beneficial, 
it does not follow that they are to be exempted from 
criticism. Their effect depends on the prestige of 
their truth. That is, they must have reasons on their 
side. But a doctrine is not supported by reasons, 
unless the objections are stated and answered ; not 
sham objections, but the real difficulties of an enquir- 
ing mind. If the statement of such difficulties is 
forcibly suppressed, the rational foundations will 
sooner or later be sapped. 

If illusions are themselves good, freedom of thought 



FREEDOM ESSENTIAL TO THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH. 267 

will give us the best. Why should we protect inferior 
illusions against the discovery of the superior ? The 
unfettered march of the intellect may improve the 
quality of our illusions as illusions, while also 
strengthening their foundations. If religion be a 
good thing, the best religion is the best thing ; and 
we cannot be sure of having the best, if men are 
forbidden to make a search. 

Supposing, then, truth is desirable, the means to the 
end are desirable. Now one of the means is perfect 
liberty to call in question every opinion whatsoever. 
This is not all that is necessary ; it is not even the 
principal condition of the discovery of new truth. It 
is, however, an indispensable adjunct, a negative con- 
dition. While laborious search for facts, care in 
comparing them, genius in detecting deep identities, 
are the highways to knowledge, — the permission to 
promulgate new doctrines and to counter-argue the 
old is equally essential. Men cannot be expected 
to go through the toil of making discoveries at the 
hazard of persecution. If a few have done so, it is 
their glory and everybody else's shame. 

That the torch of truth should be shaken till it 
shine, is generally admitted. Still, exceptions are 
made ; otherwise the present argument would be 
superfluous. On certain subjects there is a demand 
for protection against innovating views. The impli- 
cation is that, in these subjects, truth is better arrived 
at by delegating the search to a few, and treating 
their judgment as final. I need not ask where we 
should have been, if this mode of arriving at truth 



268 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

had been followed universally. The monopoly of 
enquiry claimed for the higher subjects, if set up in 
the lower, would be treated as the empire of darkness. 

Second. The subscription to articles, and the en- 
forcement of a creed by penalties, are nugatory for 
their own purpose ; they fail to secure uniformity of 
belief. 

This is shown in various ways. For instance, to 
inculcate adhesion to a set of articles, is merely to 
ensure that none shall use words that formally deny 
one or other of the doctrines prescribed. It does not 
say, that the subscriber shall teach the whole round 
of doctrines, in their due order and proportion. A 
preacher may at pleasure omit from his pulpit dis- 
courses any single doctrine ; so that, in so far as his 
ministrations are concerned, to the hearers such 
doctrine is non-existent ; without being denied, it is 
ignored. Against omission, a prosecution for heresy 
would not hold. In this way, the clergy have always 
had a certain amount of liberty, and have freely used 
it. In so doing, they have altered the whole character 
of the prescribed creed, without being technically 
heterodox. Everyone of us has listened to preachers 
of this description. Some ignore the Trinity, some 
the Atonement ; many nowadays, without denying 
future punishment, never mention hell to ears polite. 
If the rigorous exclusion of a leading doctrine should 
excite misgivings, a very slight, formal, and pass- 
ing admission may be made, while the stress of ex- 
hortation is thrown upon quite different points. 

To attain a conviction for heresy, involving depri- 



SUBSCRIPTION FAILS TO ATTAIN ITS END. 269 

vation of office, the forms of justice must be respected. 
It is only under peculiar circumstances, that the 
ecclesiastical authority can be content with saying, " I 
do not like thee, Dr. Fell, or Dr. Smith, and I depose 
thee accordingly". A regular trial, with proof of 
specific contradiction of specific articles, allowing the 
accused the full benefit of his explanations, must be 
the rule in every corporation that respects justice. 
In the Church of England, a man cannot be deprived 
unless he contradict the articles clearly and consis- 
tently ; the smallest incoherence on his part, the 
slightest vacillation in the rigour of his denial, is 
enough to save him. We may easily imagine, there- 
fore, how widely a clergyman may stray from the 
fair, ordinary, current rendering of the doctrines of 
the Church, without danger. The whole essence of 
Christianity may be perverted under a few cunning 
precautions and by observing a few verbal formalities. 

It has been pointed out, many times over, that the 
legally imposed creeds were the creatures of accident 
and circumstances at the time of their enactment, 
and are wholly unsuitable to the conservation of the 
more permanent and essential articles of the Christian 
faith. The amount of heresy, as against the more 
truly representative doctrines, that may pass through 
their meshes is very great. 

This weakness is aggravated by another — the want 
of any provision for amending the creed from time to 
time. If it were desirable to adopt measures for 
maintaining uniformity of opinions among the clergy, 
the creed should be excised, or added to, according to 



27O RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

the needs of every age. That this is not done, shows 
that the machinery of tests is altogether abnormal ; it 
is not within the type of regular legislation. That 
any given creed should be regarded as out of keeping, 
as both redundant and defective, and yet that the 
ecclesiastical authority should shrink from applying a 
remedy to its most obvious defects, proves that the 
system itself is bad. All healthy legislation lends 
itself to perpetual improvement ; that the enactments 
of articles of belief cannot be reconsidered, is a sign 
of rottenness. 

A third objection to tests is, that mere dogmatic 
uniformity, it it were more complete than any tests can 
make it, is at best but a part of the religious character. 
It does nothing to secure or promote fervour, feeling, 
the emotional element in religion. It is by moral heat, 
far more than by its mould of doctrine, that religion 
influences mankind. There is no means of censuring 
preachers for coldness or languid indifference ; or 
rather, there is another and more legitimate means 
than penal prosecutions, namely, expressed dissatis- 
faction and the preference of those that excel in the 
quality. A warm, glowing manner, an unctuous 
delivery, commands hearers and conducts to popu- 
larity and importance. The men of cold and unfeel- 
ing natures may get into office, but they are lightly 
esteemed. They are not had up to a public trial and 
deposed, but they are treated, and spoken of, in such 
a way as to discourage men of their type from be- 
coming preachers, and to encourage the other sort. 
There are many qualifications that go to forming a 



ELEMENT OF FEELING NOT SECURED. 27 1 

good preacher ; the holding of the creed of the body 
is only one. Yet, with the exception of gross im- 
morality or abandonment of duty, correctness of creed 
*;> the only one that is subjected to the extreme 
penalty of loss of office ; the others are secured by 
different means. Is it too much to infer that, without 
the extreme penalty, a reasonable conformity to the 
prevailing creed might also be secured ? 

The importance of the element of feeling has been 
most perceived in times when the religious current 
was strongest. At these times, its expression would 
not be hemmed in by rigorous formulas. The first 
communication of religious doctrines has always 
partaken of a broad and free rendering ; apparent 
discrepancies were, disregarded. To reduce all the 
utterances of the prophets and the apostles to definite 
forms and rigid dogmas, was to misconceive the 
situation. We may well suppose that the New 
Testament writers would have refused to subscribe 
the Athanasian Creed or the Westminster Confession * r 
not because these were in fiat contradiction to Scrip- 
ture, but because the way of embodying the religious 
verities in these documents would be repugnant to 
their ideas of form in such matters. The creed- 
builders may have been never so anxious to give 
exact equivalents of the original authorities; yet 
their fine distinctions and subtle logic would have, in 
all probability, been ranked by Paul and Peter among 
the latter-day perversions of the faith. The very com- 
position of a creed would have been as distasteful to the 
first century, as it is incongruous to the nineteenth. 



272 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

The evil operation of religious tests, and of the 
accompanying intolerance of the public mind as shown 
towards any form of dissent from the stereotyped 
orthodoxy, admits of a very wide handling. It is of 
course the problem of religious liberty. Some parts 
of the argument need to be reproduced here, to help 
us in replying to the objections against an uncondi- 
tional abolition of compulsory creeds. 

In conversing, many years ago, with the late Jules 
Mohl, the great Oriental scholar, professor of Persian 
in the College de France, I was much struck with his 
account of the nature of his duties as an expounder 
of the modern Persian authors. These authors, for 
example the poet Sadi, were in creed adherents of the 
ancient Persian fire-worship, notwithstanding the Mo- 
hammedan conquest of their country. They were, of 
course, forbidden to avow that creed directly ; and in 
consequence, they had recourse to a form of composi- 
tion by doubles entendres, veiling the ancient creed 
under Mohammedan forms. Mohl's business, as their 
expounder, was to strip off the disguise and show the 
true bearings of the writers, under their show of con- 
formity to the established opinions. 

This is a typical illustration of what has happened 
in Europe for more than two thousand years. The 
first recorded martyr to free speculation in philosophy 
was Anaxagoras in Greece. Mulcted in the sum of 
five talents, and expelled from Athens, he was con- 
sidered fortunate in being allowed to retire to Lamp- 
sacus and end his days there. His fate, however, was 
soon eclipsed by the execution of Socrates, — an event 



CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXECUTION OF SOCRATES. 273 

whereby the Athenian burghers were enabled to bias 
the expression of free opinions from that time to this. 
The first persona to feel the shock was Plato. That he 
was affected by it, to the extent of suppressing his 
views on the higher questions, we can infer with the 
greatest probability. 

Aristotle was equally cowed. A little before his 
death, the chief priest of Eleusis, following the Socratic 
precedent, entered an indictment against him for 
impiety. This indictment was supported by citations 
of certain heretical doctrines from his published 
writings; on which Grote makes the significant remark, 
that his paean in honour of his friend Hermeias would 
be more offensive to the feelings of an ordinary 
Athenian citizen than any philosophical dogma ex- 
tracted from the cautious prose compositions of Aris- 
totle. That is to say, the execution of Socrates was 
always before his eyes ; he had to pare his expressions 
so as not to give offence to Athenian orthodoxy. 
We can never know the full bearings of such a dis- 
turbing force. ( The editors of Aristotle complain of 
the corruptness of his text ; a far worse corruptness 
lies behind. In Greece, Socrates alone had the 
courage of his opinions. While his views as to a 
future life, for example, are plain and frank, the real 
opinion of Aristotle on the question is an insoluble 
problem. Now, considering the enormous sway of 
Aristotle in modern Europe, — -how desirable was it 
that his real sentiments had reached us unperverted 
by the Athenian burgher and the hemlock ! 

It would be too adventurous to continue the illus- 
13 



274 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

tration in detail through the Christian ages. It is 
well known that the later schoolmen strove to repre- 
sent reason as against authority, but wrote under 
the curb of the Papal power ; hence their aims can 
only be divined. A modern instance or two will be 
still more effective. 

It can at last be clearly seen what was the motive 
of Carlyle's perplexing style of composition. We 
now know what his opinions were, when he began 
to write, and that to express them then would 
have been fatal to his success ; yet he was not a 
man to indulge in rank hypocrisy. He, accord- 
ingly, adopted a studied and ambiguous phraseology, 
which for long imposed upon the religious public, 
who put their own interpretation upon his mystical 
utterances, and gave him the benefit of any doubts. 
In the "Life of Sterling" he threw off the mask, but 
still was not taken at his word. Had there been a 
perfect tolerance of all opinions he would have begun 
as he ended ; and his strain of composition, while still 
mystical and high-flown, would never have been 
identified with our national orthodoxy. 

I have grave doubts as to whether we possess 
Macaulay's real opinions on religion. His way of 
dealing with the subject is so like the hedging of an 
unbeliever that, without some good assurance to the 
contrary, I must include him also among the imitators 
of Aristotle's " caution ". Some future critic will 
devote himself, like Professor Mohl, to expounding 
his ambiguous utterances. 

When Sir Charles Lyell brought out his "Antiquity 



EVIL OF DISFRANCHISING THE CLERGY. 275 

of Man " he too was cautious. Knowing the dangers 
of his footing, he abstained from giving an estimate 
of the extension of time required by his evidences of 
human remains. Society in London, however, would 
not put up with that reticence, and he had to disclose 
at dinner parties what he had withheld from the public 
— namely, that, in his opinion, the duration of man 
could not be less than fifty thousand years. 

These few instances must suffice to represent a long 
history of compelled reticence on the part of the men 
best qualified to instruct mankind. The question now 
is — What has been gained by it? What did the 
condemnation of Socrates do for the Athenian pub- 
lic? What did the chief priest of Eleusis hope to 
attain by indicting Aristotle? Unless we can show, 
as is no doubt attempted, that the set of opinions that 
happen to be consecrated at any one time, whether 
right or wrong, were essential to the existence of 
society, — then the attempt to improve upon them was 
truly meritorious, instead of being censurable. If the 
good of society as a whole is not plainly implicated, 
there remains only the interest of the place-holders 
under the existing system, as opposed to the interest 
of the mass of the people, who are, one and all, con- 
cerned in knowing the truth. 

Again contracting the discussion to the narrow 
limits of the title of the essay, I must urge the special 
injury done to mankind by disfranchising the whole 
clerical class; thatJs to say, by depriving their au- 
thority of its proper weight in matters of faith. It is 
an incontrovertible rule of evidence, that the authority 



276 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

of an interested party is devoid of worth. Reasons 
are good in themselves, whoever utters them ; but in 
trusting to authority, apart from reason, we need a 
disinterested authority. This the clergy at present 
are not, except on the points left undecided by the 
articles. If a man has five thousand a year, condi- 
tional on his holding certain views, his holding those 
views says nothing in their favour. For a much less 
bribe, plenty of men can be got to maintain any 
opinions whatsoever. When to this is added that, for 
certain other views, the holders are subjected to loss 
■ — it may be to fine, imprisonment, or death, — the 
value of men's adhesion to the favoured creed, as mere 
authority, is simply nil. 

Truth, honesty, outspokenness, are not so well es- 
tablished as' virtues, that we can afford to subject 
them to discouragement. The contrary course would 
be more for the general good in every way. When 
the law is intolerant in principle, men will be hypo- 
crites from policy You cannot train children to speak 
the truth if, from whatever cause, they have an inter- 
est in deception. A repressive discipline induces a 
coarse outward submission, but cannot reach the in- 
ward parts :- it only engenders hatred, and substitutes 
for open revolt an insidious secret retaliation. Those 
only that come under the generous nurture of freedom 
can be counted on for hearty and willing devotion. 
If we would reap the higher virtues, we must sow on 
the soil of liberty. Encourage a man to say whatever 
he thinks, and you make the most of him ; for diffi- 



RELAXATION NOW PRESSING. 277 

cult questions, where the mind needs all its powers, 
there should be no burdensome 'caution' in giving 
out the results. 

The imposing of subscription has its defenders, and 
these have to be fairly met. First, however, let us 
advert to the reasons why relaxation is more pressing 
now than formerly. 

It is known that, among dissentients from the lead- 
ing dogmas of the prevailing creed of Christendom, 
are to be included some of the most authoritative 
names of the last three centuries ; our present for- 
mulas would not have been subscribed by Bacon, 
Newton, Locke, Kant ; unless from mere pliancy and 
for the sake of quiet, like Hobbes. If they had 
been in clerical orders, and had freely avowed their 
opinions as we know them, they would have been liable 
to deposition. Yet the difficulties that these -men 
might feel were far less than those that now beset the 
profession of our prevailing creeds. The advances of 
knowledge on all the subjects that come into contact 
with the various articles, as received by the orthodox 
Churches, may not, indeed, compel the relinquishment 
of those articles, but will force the holders to change 
front, to re-shape them in different forms. To such 
necessary modification, the creeds are a fatal obstacle. 
On a few points, such as the Creation in six days, these 
have been found elastic. The doctrine that death 
came by the fall has been explained away as spiritual 
death. This process cannot go much further, without 
too much paltering with obvious meanings. The 



278 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

recently-proclaimed doctrine of the Antiquity of Man 
comes into apparent conflict with man's creation and 
fall, as set forth in Genesis, on which are suspended 
the most vital doctrines of our creed. A reconcilia- 
tion may be possible, but not without a very exten- 
sive modification of the scheme of the Atonement. 
It is not necessary to press Darwin's doctrine of Evolu- 
tion ; the deficiency of positive proot for that hypo- 
thesis may always be pleaded, as against the havoc 
it would make with the more distinctive points of 
Christian doctrine. But the existence of man on the 
earth, at the very lowest statement, must be carried 
back twenty thousand years ; this is not hypothesis, but 
fact. The record of the creation and the fall of man 
will probably have to be subjected t© a process of 
allegorising, but with inevitable loss. Now, whoever 
refuses a matter oi fact counts on being severely 
handled ; it is a different thing to refuse an allegory. 

The modern doctrine named the " struggle for exis- 
tence " is the old difficulty, known as " the origin of 
evil," presented in a new shape. It is rendered more 
formidable, as a stumbling-block to the benevolence of 
the Author of nature, by making what was considered 
exceptional the rule. It gathers up into one compre- 
hensive statement the scattered occasions of misery, 
and reveals a system whereby the few thrive at *he 
expense of the many. The apologist for Divine good- 
ness has thus an aggravation of his load, and needs 
to be freed from all unnecessary trammels in the 
shaping of his creed. 

It has not escaped attention, that the honours paid 



OPPOSING DOGMAS TO BE RECONCILED 279 

to the illustrious Darwin, are an admission that our 
received Christianity is open to revision. In conse- 
quence of a few conciliatory phrases, Darwin has been 
credited with theism ; nevertheless he has ridden 
rough-shod over all that is characteristic in our estab- 
lished creeds. Can the creeds come scathless out of 
the ordeal ? 

It is passing from the greater to the less, to dwell 
upon the increasing difficulties connected with the 
Inspiration of the Bible. The Church-of-Englander 
luckily escapes making shipwreck here ; the legal 
interpretation of the formularies saves him. Yet 
to mankind, generally, it seems necessary that a 
superior weight should attach to a revealed book ; 
and the other Churches cling to some form of 
inspiration, notwithstanding the growing difficulties 
attending it. Here too there must be more freedom 
given to the men that would extricate the situation. 
At all events, the doctrine should be made an open 
question. Even Cardinal Newman suggests doubts 
as to its being an imperative portion of the creed. 

The attacks made on all sides against the Miracu- 
lous element in religion will force on a change of 
front When an eminent popular writer and sincere 
friend of the Church of England surrenders miracles 
without the slightest compunction, it needs not the 
elaborate argumentation of " Supernatural Religion " 
to show that some new treatment of the question is 
called for. But may it not be impossible to put the 
new wine into the sworn bottles ? 



280 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

Like most great innovations, the proposal to libe- 
rate the clergy from all restraint as to the opinions 
that they may promulgate, necessarily encounters 
opposition. We are, therefore, bound to consider 
the reasons on the other side. 

These reasons may be quoted in mass. As regards 
Established Churches in particular, it is said there is 
a State compact or understanding with the clergy 
that they should teach certain doctrines and no other; 
that if tests were abolished, there would be no security 
against the most extreme opinions ; men eating the 
bread of a Reformed Church might inculcate Ro- 
manism instead of Protestantism; the pulpits might 
give forth Deism or Agnosticism. No sect could 
hope to maintain its principles, if the clergy might 
preach any doctrine that pleased themselves. More 
especially would it be monstrous and unjust, to allow 
the rich benefices ot our highly endowed Church of 
England to be enjoyed by men whose hearts are in 
some quite different form of religion, or no religion, 
and who would occupy themselves in drawing men 
away from the faith. 

On certain assumptions, these arguments have great 
force. Clearly a man ought not to take pay for 
doing one thing and do something quite different 
When a body of religionists come together upon 
certain tenets, it would be a reductio ad absurdum 
for any of its ministers to be occupied in denying and 
controverting these tenets. 

All this supposes, however, that men will not be 
made to conform by any means short of prosecution and 



POSSIBLE ABUSES OF CLERICAL FREEDOM. 28 1 

deprivation ; that the suspending of a severe penalty 
over men's heads is in itself a harmless device ; and 
that religious systems are now stereotyped to our 
satisfaction, so that to deviate from them is mere 
wantonness and love of singularity. Such are the 
assumptions that we feel called upon to challenge. 

The plea that the Church has engaged itself to 
the State to teach certain tenets, in return for its 
emoluments and privileges, has lost its point in our 
time. ' L'etat, c'est moi.' The Church and the State 
are composed of the same persons. Gibbon's famous 
mot has collapsed. ' The religions 01 the Roman 
world,' he says, ' were all considered by the people as 
equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and 
by the magistrate t.s equally useful.' The people are 
now their own magistrates, and the true and the useful 
must contrive to unite upon the same thing. If the 
Church feels subscription and fixity of creed a burden, 
it has only to turn ifs members to account in their 
capacity of citizens of the State to relieve itself. If 
it silently ignores the creed, it is still responsible 
mainly to itself. 

The more serious objection is the possible abuse of 
the freedom of the clergy to utter opinions at variance 
with the prevailing creed. .This position needs a care- 
ful scrutiny. 

In the first place, the argument supposes a condi- 
tion of things that has now ceased. When creeds 
were accepted in their literality by the bodies profess- 
ing them, when the state of general opinion contained 
nothing hostile, and suggested no difficulties, — for any 



282 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

one member of a body to turn traitor may have well 
seemed mere perversity, temper, love of singularity, 
or anything but a wish to get at truth. The offence 
assumed the character of a moral obliquity, and dis- 
cipline can never be relaxed for immorality proper. 

All the circumstances are now changed. The min- 
isters and members of religious communities no longer 
cherish the same set of doctrines with only im- 
material varieties ; they no longer accept their articles 
in the sense of the original framers. The body at 
large has contracted the immoral taint ; the whole 
head is sick ; any remaining soundness is not with 
the acquiescent mass, but with the out-spoken indi- 
viduals. In such a state of things, ordinary rules are 
inapplicable. There is a sort of paralysis of authority, 
an uncertainty whether to punish or to wink at flag- 
rant heresy. To say in such a case that the relaxa- 
tion of the creed is not a thing to be proposed, is to 
confess, like Livy on the condition of Rome, that we 
can endure neither our vices nor their remedies. 

Too much has at all times been made of individual 
divergences from the established creed. The influ- 
ence of a solitary preacher smitten with the love of 
heretical peculiarity has been grossly overrated. The 
assumption is, that his own flock will, as a matter of 
course, follow their shepherd ; that is to say, the adhe- 
sion of individual congregations to the creed of the 
Church depends upon its being faithfully reproduced 
by their regular minister. Such is not by any means 
the fact ; the creed of the members of a Church is 
not at the mercy of any passing influence. It has been 



INDIVIDUAL DIVERGENCES UNIMPORTANT. 283 

engrained by a plurality of influences ; one man did not 
make it, and one man cannot unmake it. Moreover, 
allowance should be made for the spirit of opposition 
found in Church members, as well as in other people. 

It may be said that persons ought not to be sub- 
jected to the annoyance of hearing attacks upon 
their hereditary tenets, in which they expect to be 
more and more confirmed by their spiritual teacher. 
This is of course, in itself, an evil. We are not to 
expect ordinary men to recognise the necessity of 
listening to the arguments against their views, in 
order to hold these all the stronger. If this height 
were generally reached, every Church would invite, as 
a part of its constituted machinery, a representative 
of all the heresies afloat ; a certain number of its 
ministers should be the avowed champions of the 
views most opposed to its own — advocati diaboli, so 
to speak. There would then be nothing irregular in 
the retention of converts from its own number to 
these other doctrines. It would be, however, alto- 
gether improper to found any argument on the sup- 
position of such a state ot matters. 

It is an incident of every institution made up of 
a large collection of officials, that some one or more 
are always below the standard of efficiency, whence 
those that depend on their services must suffer incon- 
venience. A great amount of dulness in preaching 
has always to be tolerated; so also might an occasional 
deviation from orthodoxy ; the more so, that the 
severity of the discipline for heresy has a good deal 
to do with the dulness. 



284 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

If heretical tendencies have shown themselves in a 
Church communion, either they are absurd, unmean- 
ing, irrelevant — perhaps a reversion to some defunct 
opinion, — or they are the suggestion of new knowledge 
in theology, or outside of it. In the first case, they 
will die a natural death, unless prosecution gives them 
importance ; in the other case, they are to be candidly 
examined, to be met by argument rather than by 
deposition. An individual heretic can always be 
neglected ; if he is enthusiastic and able, he may 
have a temporary following, especially when the 
community has sunk into torpor. If two or three in 
a hundred adopt erroneous opinions, it is nothing ; if 
thirty or forty in a hundred have been led astray, the 
matter hangs dubious, and discretion is advisable. 
When a majority is gained, the fulness of the time 
has arrived ; the heresy has triumphed. 

However strong may be the theoretical reasons for 
the abolition of the penal sanctions to orthodoxy, 
they do not dispense with the confirmation of ex- 
perience ; and I must next refer to the more pro- 
minent examples of Churches constituted on the 
principle of freedom to the clergy. 

The most remarkable and telling instance is that 
furnished by the English Presbyterian Church, with 
its coadjutor in Ireland. The history of this Church 
is not unfamiliar to us ; the great lawsuit relating to 
Lady Hewley's charity gave notoriety to the changes 
of opinion that had come over it in the course of a 
century. But whoever is earnest on the question as 



THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH EXEMPLARY. 285 

to the expediency of tests should study the history 
thoroughly, as being in every way most instructive. 
The leading facts, as concerns the present argument, 
are mainly these : — 

First, the great decision at the Salters' Hall con- 
ference, on the 10th of March, 17 19, when, by a 
majority of 73 to 69, it was resolved to exact no test 
from the clergy as a condition of their being ordained 
ministers of the body. The point more immediately 
at issue was the Trinity, on which opinions had been 
already divided ; but the decision was general. The 
principle of the right of private judgment admitted of 
no exceptions. 

Second. Long before this decision, the minds of 
the ministers had been ripening to the conviction, 
that creeds and subscriptions could do no good, and 
often did harm. Indeed, the terms employed by 
some of them are everything that we now desire. 
For example, Joseph Hunter, on the eve of the 
decision, wrote thus : " We have always thought that 
such human declarations of faith were far from being 
eligible on their own account, since they tend to narrow 
the foundations of Christianity and to restrain that 
latitude of expression in which our great Legislator 
has seen fit to deliver His Will to us ". 

Third. Most remarkable is it to witness the con- 
sequences of this great act of emancipation. A 
hundred and sixty-five years have elapsed — a suffi- 
cient time for judging of the experiment. The 
Presbyterian body at the time were made up partly 
of Arians, partly of Trinitarians, who held each other 



286 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

in mutual tolerance ; the ministers freely exchang- 
ing pulpits. No bad consequence followed. We 
do not hear of individual ministers going to ex- 
travagant lengths in either direction. A large body 
gravitated, in the course of time, to the modern 
Unitarian position ; but, considering the start, the 
stride was not great. In such a century as the 
eighteenth, there might well have been greater modi- 
fications of the creeds than actually occurred. Evi- 
dently, in the absence of any compulsory adherence 
to settled articles, there was an abundant tendency to 
conservatism. Commencing with Baxter, Howe, and 
Calamy, we find, in the course of the century, such 
names as Lardner, Price, Priestley, Belsham, Kippis, 
James Lindsay, Lant Carpenter — men of liberal and 
enlightened views on all political questions, and 
earnest in their good works. These men's testimony 
to what is truth in religion, is of more value to us 
than the opinions of the creed-bound clergy. Reason 
is still reason, but the weight of authority is with the 
free enquirers. 

Fourth. The history of the Presbyterians answers 
a question that may be properly asked of the creed- 
abolitionist ; namely, What bond is left to hold a 
religious community together? The bond, in their 
case, simply was voluntary adhesion and custom. A 
religious community may hold together, like a politi- 
cal party, with only a vague tacit understanding. 
When a body is once formed, it has an outward 
cohesion, which is quite enough for maintaining it in 
the absence of explosive materials. The established 



MODES OF TRANSITION FROM THE PRESENT SYSTEM. 287 

Churches could retain their historical continuity under 
any modification of the articles. By the present 
system, they have been habituated to take their creed 
as their legal definition ; for that they could sub- 
stitute their history and framework. 

Various modes have been suggested for making 
the transition from the present system. 

One way is, to fall back upon the Bible as a test. 
This is the same as no test at all. A man could not 
call himself a Christian minister, if he did not accept 
the Bible in some sense ; and it would be obviously 
impracticable to frame a libel, and conduct a process 
for heresy, on an appeal to the Old and New Testa- 
ments at large. The Bible may be the first source of 
the Christian faith, but other confluent streams have 
entered into its development ; and we must accept 
the consequences of a fact that we cannot deny. 
However much religion may have to be broadened 
and liberalised, the operation cannot consist in revert- 
ing to the literal phraseology of the Bible. 

A second method is, to prune away the portions 
of the creed that are no longer tenable. It could 
not have been intended by the original framers of 
the creeds, that they should remain untouched for 
centuries. With many Churches, there was a clear 
understanding that the formulas should be revised at 
brief intervals. The non-established Churches show 
a disposition to resume this power. The United 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland has had the courage 
to make a beginning ; still, relief will not in this way 



288 RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS. 

be given to minorities, and small changes do not 
correspond to the demands of new situations. 

A more effectual mode is to discourage and suspend 
prosecutions for heresy. The practice of heresy-hunt- 
ing might be allowed to fall into disuse. Instead of 
deposing heretics, the orthodox champions should 
simply refute them. 

In the Church of England, in particular, a change 
of the law may be necessary to give the desired re- 
laxation. The judges before whom heretics are tried 
are very exacting in the matter of evidence, but they 
cannot stop a prosecution made in regular form. The 
Church of Scotland has more latitude in this respect, 
and has already given indications of entering on the 
path leading to desuetude.* 

* See, at the end, p. 319, Notes and References on the history and 
practice of Subscription and Penal Tests. 






IX. 
PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 



THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE 
BODIES. 1 

THAT great institution of political liberty, the De- 
liberative Assembly, seems to be on the eve of 
breaking down. I do not speak merely of the highest 
assembly in the country, but of the numerous smaller 
bodies as well, from many of which a cry of distress 
may be heard. The one evil in all is the intolerable 
length of the debates. Business has increased, local 
representative bodies have a larger membership than 
formerly, and, notwithstanding the assistance rendered 
by committees, the meetings are protracted beyond 
bounds. 

In this difficulty, attention naturally fastens, in the 
first instance, on the fact that the larger part of the 
speaking is entirely useless ; neither informing nor 
convincing any of the hearers, and yet occupying the 
time allotted for the despatch of business. How to 
eliminate and suppress this ineffectual oratory would 
appear to be the point to consider. But as Inspiration 
itself did not reveal a mode of separating in advance 
the tares from the wheat, so there is not now any 
patent process for insuring that, in the debates of 

1 Contemporary Review, November, 1880. 



292 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

corporate bodies, the good speaking, and only the good 
speaking, shall be allowed. 

Partial solutions of the difficulty are not wanting. 
The inventors of corporate government — the Greeks, 
were necessarily the inventors of the forms of debate, 
and they introduced the timing of the speakers. To 
this is added, occasionally, the selection of the 
speakers, a practice that could be systematically 
worked, if nothing else would do. Both methods have 
their obvious disadvantages. The arbitrary selection 
of speakers, even by the most impartial Committee of 
Selection, would, according to our present notions, 
seem to infringe upon a natural right, the right of each 
member of a body to deliver an opinion, and give the 
reasons for it. It would seem like reviving the censor- 
ship of the press, to allow only a select number to be 
heard on all occasions. 

May not something be done to circumvent this vast 
problem ? May there not be a greater extension 
given to maxims and forms of procedure already in 
existence ? 

First, then, we recognize in various ways the pro- 
priety of obviating hurried and unpremeditated 
decisions. Giving previous notice of motions has that 
end in view ; although, perhaps, this is more commonly 
regarded simply as a protection to absentees. Ad- 
vantage is necessarily taken of the foreknowledge of 
the business to prepare for the debates. It is a farther 
help, that the subject has been already discussed some- 
where or other by a committee of the body, or by the 



OBVIATING HURRIED DECISIONS. 293 

agency of the public press. Very often an assembly 
is merely called upon to decide upon the adoption of 
a proposal that has been long canvassed out of doors. 
The task of the speakers is then easy — we might almost 
say no speaking should be required : but this is to 
anticipate. 

In legislation by Parliament, the forms allow 
repetition of the debates at least three times in both 
Houses. This is rather a cumbrous and costly remedy 
for the disadvantage, in debate, of having to reply to 
a speaker who has just sat down. In principle, no 
one ought to be called to answer an argumentative 
speech on the spur of the moment. The generality 
of speakers are utterly unfit for the task, and accord- 
ingly do it ill. A few men, by long training, acquire 
the power of casting their thoughts into speaking train, 
so as to make a good appearance in extempore reply ; 
yet even these would do still better if they had a little 
time. The adjournment of a debate, and the reopening 
of a question at successive stages, furnish the real 
opportunities for effective reply. In a debate begun 
and ended at one sitting, the speaking takes very 
little of the form of an exhaustive review, by each 
speaker, of the speeches that went before. 

It is always reckoned a thing of course to take the 
vote as soon as the debate is closed. There are some 
historical occasions . when a speech on one side has 
been so extraordinarily impressive that an adjourn- 
ment has been moved to let the fervour subside ; but 
it is usually not thought desirable to let a day elapse 
between the final reply and the division. This is a 



294 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

matter of necessity in the case of the smaller corpora- 
tions, which have to dispose of all current business at 
one sitting ; but when a body meets for a succession 
of days, it would seem to be in accordance with sound 
principle not to take the vote on the same day as the 
debate. 

These few remarks upon one important element of 
procedure are meant to clear the way for a somewhat 
searching examination of the principles that govern 
the entire system of oral debate. It is this practice 
that I propose to put upon its trial. The grounds of 
the practice I take to be the following : — 
• i. That each member of a deliberative body shall 
be provided with a complete statement of the facts 
and reasons in favour of a proposed measure, and also 
an equally complete account of whatever can be said 
against it. And this is a requirement I would concede 
to the fullest extent. No decision should be asked 
upon a question until the reasonings pro and con are 
brought fairly within the reach of every one ; to which 
I would add — in circumstances that give due time for 
consideration of the whole case. 

2. The second ground is that this ample provision 
of arguments, for and against, should be made by oral 
delivery. Whatever opportunities members may have 
previously enjoyed for mastering a question, these are 
all discounted when the assembly is called to pro- 
nounce its decision. The proposer of the resolution 
invariably summarizes, if he is able, all that is to be 
said for his proposal ; his arguments are enforced and 



ASSUMPTIONS AT THE BASIS OF ORAL DEBATE. 295 

supplemented by other speakers on his side ; while 
the opposition endeavours to be equally exhaustive. 
In short, though one were to come to the meeting 
with a mind entirely blank, yet such a one, having 
ordinary faculties of judging, would in the end be 
completely informed, and prepared for an intelligent 
vote. 

Now, I am fully disposed to acquiesce in this second 
assumption likewise, but with a qualification that is of 
considerable moment, as we shall see presently. 

3. The third and last assumption is as follows : — 
Not only is the question in all its bearings supposed 
to be adequately set forth in the speeches constituting 
the debate, but, in point of fact, the mass of the 
members, or a very important section or proportion of 
them, rely upon this source, make full use of it, and 
are equipped for their decision by means of it ; so 
much so, that if it were withdrawn none of the other 
methods as at present plied, or as they might be plied, 
would give the due preparation for an intelligent 
vote; whence must ensue a degradation in the quality 
of the decisions. 

It is this assumption that I am now to challenge, in 
the greatest instance of all, as completely belied by 
the facts. But, indeed, the case is so notoriously 
the opposite, that the statement of it will be unavoid- 
ably made up of the stalest commonplaces ; and the 
novelty will lie wholly in the inference. 

The ordinary attendance in the House.of Commons 
could be best described by a member or a regular 
official. An outsider can represent it only by the 



296 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

current reports. My purpose does not require great 
accuracy ; it is enough, that only a very small fraction 
of the body makes up the average audience. If an 
official were posted to record the fluctuating numbers 
at intervals of five minutes, the attendance might be 
recorded and presented in a curve like the fluctuations 
of the barometer ; but this would be misleading as to 
the proportion of effective listeners — those that sat out 
entire debates, or at all events the leading speeches of 
the debates, or whose intelligence was mainly fed from 
the speaking in each instance. The number of this 
class is next to impossible to get at ; but it will be 
allowed on all hands to be very small. 

Perhaps, in such an inquiry, most can be made of 
indirect evidences. If members are to be qualified for 
an intelligent decision in chief part by listening to the 
speeches, why is not the House made large enough 
to accommodate them all at once ? It would appear 
strange, on the spoken-debate theory of enlightenment, 
that more than one-third should be permanently 
excluded by want of space. One might naturally 
suppose that, in this fact, there was a breach of 
privilege of the most portentous kind. That it is so 
rarely alluded to as a grievance, even although 
amounting to the exclusion of a large number of the 
members from some of the grandest displays of 
eloquence and the mostexciting State communications, 
is a proof that attendance in the House is not looked 
upon as a high privilege, or as the sine qua non of 
political schooling. 

If it were necessary to listen to the debates in order 



EVIDENCE OF THE INUTILITY OF THE MERE SPEAKING. 297 

to know how to vote, the messages of the whips would 
take a different form. The members on each side 
would be warned of the time of commencement of 
each debate, that they might hear the comprehensive 
statement of the opener, and remain at least through 
the chief speech in reply. They might not attend all 
through the inferior and desultory speaking, but they 
would be ready to pop in when an able debater was 
on his legs, and they would hear the leaders wind up 
at the close. Such, however, is not the theory acted 
on by the whips. They are satisfied if they can 
procure attendance at the division, and look upon the 
many hours spent in the debate as an insignificant 
accessory, which could be disregarded at pleasure. 
It would take the genius of a satirist to treat the 
whipping-up machineiy as it might well deserve to be 
treated. We are here concerned with a graver view 
of it — namely, to inquire whether the institution of 
oral debate may not be transformed and contracted 
in dimensions, to the great relief of our legislative 
machinery. 

Of course, no one is ignorant of the fact that the great 
body of members of Parliament refrain altogether 
from weighing individually the opposing arguments in 
the several questions, and trust implicitly to their 
leaders. This, however, is merely another nail in the 
coffin of the debating system. The theory of inde- 
pendent and intelligent consideration, by each member, 
of every measure that comes- up, is the one most favour- 
able to the present plan, while, even on that theory, its 

efficiency breaks down under a critical handling. 
14 



290 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

It is time now to turn to what will have come into 
the mind of every reader of the last few paragraphs — 
the reporting of the speeches. Here, I admit, there is 
a real and indispensable service to legislation. My 
contention is, that in it we possess what is alone 
valuable ; and, if we could secure this, in its present 
efficiency, with only a very small minimum of oral 
delivery, we should be as well off as we are now. The 
apparent self-contradiction of the proposal to report 
speeches without speaking, is not hard to resolve. 

To come at once, then, to the mode of arriving at 
the printed debates, I shall proceed Dy a succession 
of steps, each one efficient in itself, without necessi- 
tating a farther. The first and easiest device, and one 
that would be felt of advantage in all bodies whatsoever, 
would be for the mover of a resolution to give in, 
along with the terms of his resolution, his reasons — in 
fact, what he intends as his speech, to be printed and 
distributed to each member previous to the meeting. 
Two important ends are at once gained — the time of 
a speech is saved, and the members are in possession 
beforehand of the precise arguments to be used. The 
debate is in this way advanced an important step 
without any speaking ; opponents can prepare for, 
instead of having to improvise their reply, and every 
one is at the outset a good way towards a final 
judgment. 

As this single device could be adopted alone, I will 
try and meet the objections to it, if I am only for- 
tunate enough to light on any. My experience of 
public bodies suggests but very few ; and I think the 



DEBATES INTRODUCED BY PRINTED STATEMENTS. 299 

strongest is the reluctance to take the requisite trouble. 
Most men think beforehand what they are to say in 
introducing a resolution to a public body, but do not 
consider it necessary to write down their speech at full. 
Then, again, there is a peculiar satisfaction in holding 
the attention of a meeting for a certain time, great in 
proportion to the success of the effort. But, on the 
other hand, many persons do write their speeches, and 
many are not so much at ease in speaking but that 
they would dispense with it willingly. The conclusive 
answer on the whole is — the greater good of the 
commonwealth. Such objections as these are not of 
a kind to weigh down the manifest advantages, at all 
events, in the case of corporations full of business and 
pressed for time. 

I believe that a debate so introduced would be 
shortened by more than the time gained by cutting 
off the speech of the mover. The greater preparation 
of everyone's mind at the commencement would 
make people satisfied with a less amount of speaking, 
and what there was would be more to the purpose. 

We can best understand the effects of such an 
innovation by referring to the familiar experience of 
having to decide on the Report of Committee, which 
has been previously circulated among the members. 
This is usually the most summary act of a deliberative 
body ; partly owing, no doubt, to the fact that the 
concurrence of a certain proportion is already gained ; 
while the pros and cons have been sifted by a regular 
conference and debate. Yet we all feel that we are in 
a much better position by having had before us in 



300 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

print, for some time previous, the materials necessary 
to a conclusion. At a later stage, I will consider 
the modes of raising the quality and status of the 
introductory speech to something of the nature of a 
Committee's Report. 1 

The second step is to impose upon the mover of 
every amendment the same obligation to hand in his 
speech, in writing, along with the terms of the amend- 
ment. Many public bodies do not require notice of 
amendments. It would be in all cases a great im- 
provement to insist upon such notice, and of course a 
still greater improvement to require the reasons to be 
given in also, that they might be circulated as above. 
The debate is now two steps in advance without a 
moment's loss of time to the eonstituted meeting ; 
while what remains is likely to be much more rapidly 
gone through. 

The movers of resolutions and of amendments 
should, as a matter of course, have the right of reply ; 
a portion of the oral system that would, I presume, 
survive all the advances towards printing direct. 

There remains, however, one farther move, in itself 
as defensible, and as much fraught with advantage as 
the two others. The resolution and the amendments 
being in the hands of the members ot a body, together 
with the speeches in support of each, any member 
might be at liberty to send in, also for circulation in 
print, whatever remarks would constitute his speech 

1 1 have often thought that the practice of circulating, with a motion, 
the proposer's reasons, would, on many occasions, be worthy of being 
voluntarily adopted. 



THE MAGIC OF ORATORY NOT DONE AWAY WITH. 30 1 

in the debate, thereby making a still greater saving of 
the time of the body. This would, no doubt, be felt 
as the greatest innovation of all, being tantamount to 
the extinction of oral debate ; there being then nothing 
left but the replies of the movers. We need not, how- 
ever, go the length of compulsion ; while a certain 
number would choose to print at once, the others could 
still, if they chose, abide by the old plan of oral 
address. One can easily surmise that these last 
would need to justify their choice by conspicuous 
merit ; an assembly, having in print so many speeches 
already, would not be in a mood to listen to others of 
indifferent quality. 

Such a wholesale transfer of living speech to the 
silent perusal of the printed page, if seriously proposed 
in any assembly, would lead to a vehement defence of 
the power of spoken oratory. We should be told of 
the miraculous sway of the human voice, of the way 
that Whitfield entranced Hume and emptied 
Franklin's purse ; while, most certainly, neither of 
these two would ever have perused one of his printed 
sermons. And, if the reply were that Whitfield was 
not a legislator, we should be met by the speeches of 
Wilberforce and Canning and Brougham upon slavery, 
where the thrill of the living voice accelerated the 
conviction of the audience. In speaking of the 
Homeric Assembly, Mr. Gladstone remarks, in answer 
to Grote's argument to prove it a political nullity, 
that the speakers were repeatedly cheered, and that 
the cheering of an audience contributes to the de- 
cision. 



302 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

Now, I am not insensible to the power of speech, 
nor to the multitudinous waves of human feeling 
aroused in the encounters of oratory before a large 
assembly. Apart from this excitement, it would often 
be difficult to get people to go through the drudgery 
of public meetings. Any plan that would abolish 
entirely the dramatic element of legislation would 
have small chance of being adopted. It is only when 
the painful side of debate comes into predominance, 
that we willingly forego some of its pleasures : the 
intolerable weariness, the close air, the late nights, 
must be counted along with the occasional thrills of 
delirious excitement. But as far as regards our great 
legislative bodies, it will be easy to show that there 
would still exist, in other forms, an ample scope for 
living oratory to make up for the deadness that would 
fall upon the chief assembly. 

A friend of mine once went to Roebuck to ask his 
attention to some point coming up in the House of 
Commons, and offered him a paper to read. Roebuck 
said, " I will not read, but I will hear " This well 
illustrates one of the favourable aspects of speech. 
People with time on their hands prefer being 
instructed by the living voice; the exertion is less, and 
the enlivening tones of a speaker impart an extraneous 
interest, to which we have to add the sympathy of the 
surrounding multitude. The early stages of instruction 
must be conducted viva voce; it is a late acquirement 
to be able to extract information from a printed page. 
Yet circumstances arise when the advantage of the 
printed page predominates. The more frequent 






SECONDING EXTENDED TO A PLURALITY OF BACKERS. 303 

experience in approaching public men is to be told, 
that they will not listen but will read. An hour's 
address can be read in ten minutes : it is not impos- 
sible, therefore, to master a Parliamentary debate in 
one-tenth of the time occupied in the delivery. 

A passing remark is enough to point out the 
revolution that would take place in Parliamentary 
reporting, and in the diffusion of political instruction 
through the press, by the system of printing the 
speeches direct The full importance of this result 
will be more apparent in a little. There has been 
much talk of late about the desirability of a more 
perfect system of reporting, with a view to the 
preservation of the debates. Yet it may be very much 
doubted, whether the House of Commons would ever 
incur the expense of making up for the defects of 
newspaper reporting, by providing short-hand writers 
to take down every word, with a view to printing in 
full. 

Before completing the survey of possible improve- 
ments in deliberative procedure, I propose to extend 
the employment of another device already in use, but 
scarcely more than a form; I mean the requiring of a 
seconder before a proposal can be debated. The 
signification of this must be, that in order to obtain 
the judgment ot an assembly on any proposal, the 
mover must have the concurrence of one other mem- 
ber ; a most reasonable condition surely. What I 
would urge farther in the same direction is that, instead 
of demanding one person in addition to the mover, as 



304 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

necessary in all cases, there should be a varying 
number according to the number of the assembly. In 
a copartnery of three or four, to demand a seconder to 
a motion would be absurd ; in a body of six or eight 
it is scarcely admissible. I have known bodies of ten 
and twelve, where motions could be discussed without 
a seconder; but even with these, there would be a 
manifest propriety in compelling a member to convince 
at least one other person privately before putting the 
body to the trouble of a discussion. If, however, we 
should begin the practice of seconding with ten, is one 
seconder enough for twenty, fifty, a hundred, or six 
hundred ? Ought there not to be a scale of steady 
increase in the numbers whose opinions have been 
gained beforehand ? Let us say three or four for an 
assembly of five-and-twenty, six for fifty, ten or fifteen 
for a hundred, forty for six hundred. It is permissible, 
no doubt, to bring before a public body resolutions 
that there is no immediate chance of carrying ; what 
is termed "ventilating" an opinion is a recognized 
usage, and is not to be prohibited. But when business 
multiplies, and time is precious, a certain check should 
be put upon the ventilating of views that have as yet 
not got beyond one or two individuals ; the process 
of conversion by out-of-door agency should have made 
some progress in order to justify an appeal to the 
body in the regular course of business. That the 
House of Commons should ever be occupied by a 
debate, where the movers could not command more 
than four or five votes, is apparently out of all reason. 
The power of the individual is unduly exalted at the 



PROPORTIONING OF BACKERS. 305 

expense of the collective body. There are plenty of 
other opportunities of gaining adherents to any 
proposal that has something to be said for it ; and 
these should be plied up to the point of securing a 
certain minimum of concurrence, before the ear of 
the House can be commanded. With a body of six 
hundred and fifty, the number of previously obtained 
adherents would not be extravagantly high, if it were 
fixed at forty. Yet considering that the current 
business, in large assemblies, is carried on by perhaps 
one-third or one-fourth of the whole, and that the 
quorum in the House of Commons is such as to make 
it possible for twenty-one votes to carry a decision of 
the House, there would be an inconsistency in 
requiring more than twenty names to back every bill 
and every resolution and amendment that claimed to 
be discussed. Now I can hardly imagine restric- 
tion upon the liberty of individual members more 
defensible than this. If it were impossible to find any 
other access to the minds of individual members than 
by speeches in the House, or if all other modes of 
conversion to new views were difficult and inefficient 
in comparison, then we should say that the time of 
the House must be taxed for the ventilating process. 
Nothing of the kind, however, can be maintained. 
Moreover, although the House may be obliged to 
listen to a speech for a proposal that has merely half 
a dozen of known supporters, yet, whenever this is 
understood to be the case, scarcely any one will be at 
the trouble of" counter-arguing it, and the question 
really makes no way • the mover is looked upon as a 



306 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

bore, and the House is impatient for the extinguisher 
of a division. The securing of twenty names would 
cost nothing to the Government, or to any of the 
parties or sections that make up the House : an 
individual standing alone should be made to work 
privately, until he has secured his backing of nineteen 
more names, and the exercise would be most whole- 
some as a preparation for convincing a majority of the 
House. 

If I might be allowed to assume such an extension 
of the device of seconding motions, I could make a 
much stronger case for the beneficial consequences of 
the operation of printing speeches without delivery. 
The House would never be moved by an individual 
standing alone ; every proposal would be from the 
first a collective judgment, and the reasons given in 
along with it, although composed by one, would be 
revised and considered by the supporters collectively. 
Members would put forth their strength in one 
weighty statement to start with ; no pains would be 
spared to make the argument of the nominal mover 
exhaustive and forcible. So with the amendment ; 
there would be more put into the chief statement, and 
less left to the succeeding speakers, than at present 
And, although the mover of the resolution and the 
mover of the amendment would each have a reply, 
little would be left to detain the House, unless when 
some great interests were at stake. 

Of course the preparation of the case in favour of 
each measure would be entrusted to the best hands ; 
in Government business, it would be to some official 



OBJECTIONS TO DIRECT PRINTING OF SPEECHES. 307 

in the department, or some one engaged by the chief 
in shaping the measure itself. The statement so 
prepared would have the value of a carefully drawn-up 
report, and nothing short of this should ever be sub- 
mitted to Parliament in the procuring of new enact- 
ments. In like manner, the opponents and critics 
could employ any one they pleased to assist them in 
their compositions. A member's speech need not be in 
any sense his own ; if he borrows, or uses another 
hand, it is likely to be some one wiser than himself, 
and the public gets the benefit of the difference. 

I may now go back for a little upon the details of 
the scheme of direct printing, with the view of pressing 
some of its advantages a little farther, as well as of 
considering objections. I must remark more particu- 
larly upon the permission, accorded to the members 
generally, to send in their speeches to be circulated 
with the proceedings. This I regard as not the least 
essential- step in an effective reform of the debating 
system. It is the only possible plan of giving free 
scope to individuals, without wasting the time of the 
assembly. There need be no limit to the printing of 
speeches ; the number may be unnecessarily great, and 
the length sometimes excessive, but the abuse may be 
left to the corrective of neglect. The only material 
disadvantage attending the plan of sending in speeches 
in writing, without delivery, is that the speakers 
would have before them only the statements-in-chief 
of the movers of motion and amendment. They 
could not comment upon one another, as in the oral 



308 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

debate. Not but this might not be practicable, by- 
keeping the question open for a certain length of time, 
and circulating every morning the speeches given in 
the day previously ; but the cumbrousness of such an 
operation would not have enough to recommend it. 
The chief speakers might be expected to present a 
sufficiently broad point for criticism ; while the 
greater number are well content, if allowed to -give 
their own views and arguments without reference to 
those of others. And not to mention that, in Parlia- 
ment, all questions of principle may be debated several 
times over, it is rare that any measure comes up 
without such an amount of previous discussion out of 
doors as fully to bring out the points for attack and 
defence. Moreover, the oral debate, as usually 
conducted, contains little of the reality of effective 
rejoinder by each successive speaker to the one pre- 
ceding. 

The combined plan of printing speeches, and of 
requiring twenty backers to every proposal, while 
tolerable perhaps in the introduction of bills, and in 
resolutions of great moment, will seem to stand self- 
condemned in passing the bills through Committee, 
clause by clause. That every amendment, however 
trivial, should have to go through such a roundabout 
course, may well appear ridiculous in the extreme. 
To this I would say, in the first place, that the 
exposing of every clause of every measure of import- 
ance to the criticism of a large assembly, has long 
been regarded as the weak point of the Parliamentary 
system. It is thirty years since I heard the remark 



DIFFICULTIES OF PRINTING IN COMMITTEES. 309 

that a Code would never get through the House of 
Commons ; so many people thinking themselves 
qualified to cavil at its details. In Mill's " Repre- 
sentative Government," there is a suggestion to the 
effect, that Parliament should be assisted in passing 
great measures by consultative commissions, who 
would have the preparation of the details ; and that 
the House should not make alterations in the clauses, 
but recommit the whole with some expression of 
disapproval that would guide the commission in re- 
casting the measure. 

It must be self-evident that only a small body can 
work advantageously in adjusting the details of a 
measure, including the verbal expressions. If this 
work is set before an assembly of two hundred, it is 
only by the reticence of one hundred and ninety that 
progress can be made. Amendments to the clauses 
of a bill may come under two heads : those of 
principle, where the force of parties expends itself; and 
those of wording or expression, for clearing away 
ambiguities or misconstruction. For the one class, all 
the machinery that I have described is fully applicable. 
To mature and present an amendment of principle, 
there should be a concurrence of the same number as 
is needed to move or oppose a second reading ; there 
should be the same giving in of reasons, and the same 
unrestricted speech (in print) of individual members, 
culminating in replies by the movers. If this had 
to be done on all occasions, there would be much 
greater concentration of force upon special points, and 
the work of Committee would get on faster As to 



3IO THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

the second class of amendments, I do not think that 
these are suitable for an open discussion. They 
should rather be given as suggestions privately to the 
promoter of the measure. But, be the matter small or 
great, I contend that nothing should bring about a 
vote in the House of Commons that has not already 
acquired a proper minimum of support. 

I am very far from presuming to remodel the entire 
procedure of the House of Commons. What I have 
said applies only to the one branch, not the least 
important, of the passing of bills. There are other 
departments that might, or might not, be subjected to 
the printing system, coupled with the twentyfold 
backing ; for example, the very large subject of 
Supply, on which there is a vast expenditure of 
debating. The demand for twenty names to every 
amendment would extinguish a very considerable 
amount of these discussions. 

There is a department of the business of the House 
that has lately assumed alarming proportions — the 
putting of questions to Ministers upon every con- 
ceivable topic. I would here apply, without hesitation, 
the printing direct and the plural backing, and sweep 
away the practice entirely from the public proceedings 
of the House. No single member unsupported should 
have the power of trotting out a Minister at will. I 
do not say that so large a number of backers should 
be required in this case, but I would humbly suggest 
that the concurrence of ten members should be 
required even to put a public question. The leader 
of the Opposition, in himself a host, would not be 



ALTERNATIVE SCOPE FOR ORATORY. 31I 

encumbered with such a formality, but everyone else 
would have to procure ten signatures to an interro- 
gative : the question would be sent in, and answered ; 
while question and answer would simply appear in 
the printed proceedings of the House, and not occupy 
a single moment of the legislative time. This is a 
provision that would stand to be argued on its own 
merits, everything else remaining as it is. The loss 
would be purely in the dramatic interest attaching to 
the deliberations. 

The all but total extinction of oral debate by the 
revolutionary sweep of two simple devices, would be 
far from destroying the power of speech in other ways. 
The influence exerted by conversation on the small 
scale, and by oratory on the great, would still be 
exercised. While the conferences in private society, 
and the addresses at public meetings, would continue, 
and perhaps be increased in importance, there would 
be a much greater activity of sectional discussion, than 
at present ; in fact, the sectional deliberations, 
preparatory to motions in the House, would become 
an organized institution. A certain number of rooms 
would be set aside for the use of the different 
sections ; and the meetings would rise into public 
importance, and have their record in the public press. 
The speaking that now protracts the sittings of the 
House would be transferred to these , even the 
highest oratory would not disdain to shine where the 
reward of publicity would still be reaped. As no man 
would be allowed to engage the attention of the 
House without a following, it would be in the sections, 



312 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

in addition to private society and the press, that new 
opinions would have to be ventilated, and the first 
converts gained. 

Among the innovations that are justified by the 
principle of avoiding at all points hurried decisions, 
there is nothing that would appear more defensible 
than to give an interval between the close of a debate 
and the taking of the vote. I apprehend that the 
chief and only reason why this has never been thought 
of is, that most bodies have to finish a mass of current 
business at one sitting. In assemblies that meet day 
after day, the votes on all concluded debates could be 
postponed till next day ; giving a- deliberate interval 
in private that might improve, and could not de- 
teriorate, the chances of a good decision. Let us 
imagine that, in the House of Commons, for example, 
the first hour at each meeting should be occupied with 
the divisions growing out of the previous day's 
debates. The consequences would be enormous, but 
would any of them be bad ? The hollowness of the 
oral debate as a means of persuasion would doubtless 
receive a blasting exposure ; many would come up to 
vote, few would remain to listen to speeches. The 
greater number of those that cared to know what was 
said, would rest satisfied with the reports in the 
morning papers. 

We need to take account of the fact that even 
greater moderation in the length of speeches would 
not entirely overcome the real difficulty — the quantity 
of business thrown upon our legislative bodies. 



EVERY BODY ENTITLED TO CONTROL SPEECH-MAKING. 313 

Doubtless, if there were less talk upon burning ques- 
tions there would be more attention given to unob- 
trusive matters at present neglected. The mere 
quantity of work is too great for an assembly to do 
well. If this amount cannot be lessened — and I do 
not see how it can be — there are still the six com- 
peting vehicles at old Temple Bar. The single 
legislative rail is crowded, and the only device equal 
to the occasion is to remove some of the traffic to 
other rails. Let a large part of the speaking be got 
rid of, or else be transferred to some different arena. 

I regard as unassailable Lord Sherbrooke's position 
that every deliberative body must possess the entire 
control of its own procedure, even to the point of 
saying how much speaking it will allow on each topic. 
The rough-and-ready method of coughing down a 
superfluous speaker is perfectly constitutional, because 
absolutely necessary. If a more refined method of 
curtailing debates could be devised, without bringing 
in other evils, it should be welcomed. The forcible 
shutting of anyone's mouth will always tend to irritate, 
and it is impossible by any plan to prevent a minority 
from clogging the wheels of business. The freedom 
of print seems to me one good safety-valve for 
incontinent speech-makers ; it allows them an equal 
privilege with their fellows, and yet does not waste 
legislative time. 

I remember hearing, some time ago, that our 
Chancellor of the Exchequer was induced, on the 
suggestion of the Times, to put into print and circulate 



3 H THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

to the House beforehand the figures and tables con- 
nected with his financial statement. I could not help 
remarking, why might the Chancellor not circulate, in 
the same fashion, the whole statement, down to the 
point of the declaration of the new taxes ? It would 
save the House at least an hour and a half, while not 
a third of that time would be required to read the 
printed statement. I believe the first thing that 
would occur to anyone hearing this suggestion would 
be — " so the Chancellor might, but the same reason 
would apply to the movers of bills, and to all other 
business as well ". 

Our English Parliamentary system having been 
matured by centuries of experience, has become a 
model for other countries just entering upon repre- 
sentative government. But the imitation, if too 
literal, will not be found to work. Our system 
supposes a large gentry, staying half the year in 
London for pure pleasure, to which we may add the 
rich men of business resident there. A sufficient 
number of these classes can at any time be got to 
make up the House of Commons ; and, the majority 
being composed of such, the ways of the House are 
regulated accordingly. Daily constant attendance, 
when necessary, and readiness to respond to the whip 
at short notice, are assumed as costing nothing. But 
in other countries, the case is not the same. In the 
Italian Chamber I found professors of the University 
of Turin, who still kept up their class-work, and made 
journeys to Rome at intervals of a week or two, on 



OPINIONS FAVOURABLE TO PRINTING. 315 

the emergence of important business. Even the pay- 
ment of members is not enough to bring people away 
from their homes, and break up their avocations, for 
several months every year. The forms of procedure, 
as familiar to us, do not fit under such circumstances. 
The system of printed speeches, with division days at 
two or three weeks' interval, might be found service- 
able. But, at all events, the entire arrangements of 
public deliberation need to be revised on much broader 
grounds than we have been accustomed to ; and it is 
in this view, more than with any hope of bringing 
about immediate changes, that I have ventured to 
propound the foregoing suggestions. 



Since the foregoing paper was written, opinions 
have been expressed favourable to the use of print- 
ing as a means of shortening the debates in the 
House of Commons. Among the most notable of 
the authorities that have declared their views, we 
may count Lord Derby and Lord Sherbrooke. Both 
advocate the printing of the answers by ministers 
to the daily string of questions addressed to them. 
Lord Derby goes a step farther. He would have 
everyone introducing a bill to prepare a state- 
ment of his reasons, to be circulated among members 
at the public expense. Even this small beginning 
would be fruitful of important consequences ; the 
greatest being the inevitable extension of the sys- 
tem. 

I am not aware that my suggestion as to requiring 



316 THE PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES. 

a plurality of members to back every bill and every 
proposal, has gained any degree of support. It was 
urged that, if the power were taken away from single 
members to move in any case whatever, the few 
that are accustomed to find themselves alone, would 
form into a group to back each other. I do not hesi- 
tate to say that the supposition is contrary to all ex- 
perience. Crotcheteers have this in common with the 
insane, that they can seldom agree in any conjoined 
action. Even in the very large body constituting our 
House of Commons, it is not infrequent for motions 
to be made without obtaining a seconder. The re- 
quirement of even five concurring members would 
put an extinguisher upon a number of propositions 
that have at present to be entertained. 

The last session (1883) has opened the eyes of many 
to the absurdity of allowing a single member to block 
a bill. When it is considered that, in an assembly of 
six hundred, there is probably at least one man, 
like Fergus O'Conner, verging on insanity, and out of 
the reach of all the common motives, — we may well 
wonder that a deliberative body should so put itself 
at the mercy of individuals. Surely the rule, for 
stopping bills at half-past twelve, might have been 
accompanied with the requirement of a seconder, 
which would have saved many in the course of the 
recent sessions. It is the gross abuse of this power 
that is forcing upon reluctant minds the first advance 
to plural backing, and there is now a demand for five 
or six to unite in placing a block against a measure. 

It occurred to Mr. Gladstone, during the autumn 



EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY DISCUSSION INCREASING. 317 

session of 1882, to take down the statistics of attend- 
ance in the House for several days running. His 
figures were detailed to the House, in one of his 
speeches, and were exactly what we were prepared 
for. They completely " pounded and pulverised " the 
notion, that listening to the debates is the way that 
members have their minds made up for giving their 
votes. 

The recent parliamentary recess has witnessed an 
unusual development in the out-of-door discussion of 
burning questions. In addition to a full allowance 
of vacation oratory, and the unremitted current of the 
newspaper press, the monthlies have given forth a 
number of reasoned articles by cabinet ministers and 
by men of ministerial rank in the opposition. The 
whole tendency of our time is, to supersede parlia- 
mentary discussion by more direct appeals to the 
mind of the public. 

To stop entirely the oral discussion of business in 
Parliament would have some inconveniences ; but the 
want of adequate consideration of such measures as 
possessed the smallest interest with any class, would 
not be one of them. 



Notes and References in connection with Essay VIII., on 
. Subscription. 

It may be useful here to supply a few memoranda as to 
ihe history and present practice of Subscription to Articles. 

In the Quarterly Review, No. 117, the following observa- 
tions are made respecting the first imposition of Tests after 
the English Reformation : — 

" Before the Reformation no subscription was required 
from the body of the clergy, as none was necessary. The . 
bishops at their consecration took an oath of obedience to 
the King, in which, besides promising subjection in matters 
temporal, they ' utterly renounced and clearly forsook all 
such clauses, words, sentences, and grants, which they had 
or should have of the Pope's Holiness, that in any wise were 
hurtful or prejudicial to His Highness or His Estate Royal ' ; 
whilst to the Pope they bound themselves by oath to keep 
the rules of the Holy Fathers, the decrees, ordinances, 
sentences, dispositions, reservations, provisions, and com- 
mandments Apostolic, and, to their powers, to cause them to 
be kept by others. And, as their command over their clergy 
was complete, and they could at once remove any who 
violated the established rule of opinion, no additional 
obligation or engagement from men under such strict dis- 
cipline was requisite. The statement, therefore (by Dean 
Stanley), that ' the Roman Catholic clergy, and the clergy of 
the Eastern Church, neither formerly, nor now, were bound 
by any definite forms of subscription ; and that the unity of 
the Church is preserved there as the unity of the State is 
preserved everywhere, not by preliminary promises or oaths, 
but by the general laws of discipline and order ■ ; though 
true to the letter, is really wholly untrue in its application to 



320 Notes and References on Tests. 

the argument concerning subscriptions. For it is to the 
total absence of liberty, and to the severity of ' the general 
laws of discipline and order,' and not to a liberty greater 
than our own, that this absence of subscription is due. 

" In point of fact, the requirement of subscription from 
the clergy was coeval with the upgrowth of liberty of opinion ; 
while the circumstances of the English Reformation of reli- 
gion made it essential to the success and the safety of that 
great movement. It was essential to its success ; for as it 
was accomplished mainly by a numerical minority, both of 
the clergy and laity of the land, there could be no other 
guarantee of its maintenance than the assurance that its 
doctrines would be honestly taught, and its ritual observed 
by the whole body of the conforming clergy. 

" Thus the Reformation subscriptions aimed at the pre- 
vention of covert Popery, a danger to which the Reforming 
laity felt that they were exposed by the strong wishes of a 
majority of their own class ; by the undissembled bias of 
many of the parochial clergy ; and by the secret bias of 
some even of the bishops ; whilst the diminution of their 
absolute control over the clergy lessened the power of en- 
forcing the new opinions when the bishop was sincerely 
attached to them." 

The entire article is of value both for its historical infor- 
mation as to the history of Tests in the English Church, 
and for its mode of advocating the retention of subscription 
to the Articles, as at present enforced. 

The Report of the Royal Commission of 1864, on Sub- 
scription in the English Church, supplied a complete account 
of all the changes in subscription from the Reformation 
downwards. Reference may also be made to Stoughton's 
" History of Religion in England," for the incidents in 
greater detail. 



Subscription came with the English Reformation. 321 

Perhaps the most remarkable defence of Liberty, as against 
the prevailing view in the English Church, is Dean Milman's 
speech before the Clerical Subscription Commission, of which 
he was a member. It is printed in Eraser's Magazine, March, 
1865, and is included in the criticism of the Quarterly 
Review article, already quoted. 

The Dean's Resolution submitted to the Commission was 
as follows : — 

" Conformity to the Liturgy of the Church of England 
being the best and the surest attainable security for ' the 
declared agreement of the Clergy with the doctrines of the 
Church ' ; with many the daily, with all the weekly public 
reading of the services of the Church of England (containing, 
as they do, the ancient creeds of the Church Catholic), and 
the constant use of the Sacramental offices and other for- 
mularies in the Book of Common Prayer, being a solemn 
and reiterated pledge of their belief in those doctrines, the 
Subscription to the thirty-nine Articles is unnecessary. Such 
Subscription adds no further guarantee for the clergyman's 
faithfulness to the doctrines of the Church ; while the 
peculiar form and controversial tone in which the Articles 
were compiled is the cause of much perplexity, embarrass- 
ment, and difficulty, especially to the younger clergy and to 
those about to enter into Holy Orders." 

Much doubt was entertained, whether this motion came 
within the terms of the Commission. It was not pressed by 
the Dean. 

I give the following quotation from the speech : — 

, . . " And if I venture to question the expediency, 
the wisdom, I will say the righteousness of retaining sub- 
scription to the thirty-nine Articles as obligatory on all 
clergymen, I do so, not from any difficulty in reconciling 
with my own conscience what, during my life, I have done 
more than once, but from the deep and deliberate conviction 
15 



322 Notes and References on Tests. 

that such subscription is altogether unnecessary as a safe 
guard for the essential doctrines of Christianity, which are 
more safely and fully protected by other means. It never 
has been, is not, and never will be a solid security for its 
professed object, the reconciling or removing religious dif- 
ferences, which it tends rather to create and keep alive ; is 
embarrassing to many men who might be of the most valu- 
able service in the ministry of the Church ; is objectionable 
as concentrating and enforcing the attention of the youngest 
clergy on questions, some abstruse, some antiquated, and in 
themselves at once so minute and comprehensive as to 
harass less instructed and profound thinkers, to perplex and 
tax the sagacity of the most able lawyers and the most 
learned divines. . . . 

" One of my chief objections to subscription to the thirty- 
nine Articles as a perpetual test of English Churchmanship 
i; that they are throughout controversial, and speak, as of 
necessity they must speak, the controversial language of their 
day ; they cannot, therefore, in my opinion, be fully, clearly, 
and distinctly understood without a careful study and a very 
wide knowledge of the disputes and opinions of those times, 
a calm yet deep examination of their meaning, objects, limi- 
tations, which cannot be expected from young theological 
students, from men fresh from their academical pursuits. 
I venture to add, indeed to argue, that their true bearing 
and interpretation seems to me to have escaped some of our 
most eminent judges from want of that full study and per- 
fect knowledge ; and I must say that, in these laborious and 
practical days, it may be questioned whether this study of 
controversies, many of them bygone, will be so useful, so 
profitable, as entire devotion to the plainer and simpler 
duties of the clergyman. 

" Their immense range, too, the infinite questions into 
which they branch out (it has been said, I know not how 



Report of Presbyterian Alliance. 323 

truly, that five hundred questions may be raised upon them), 
is a further objection to their maintenance as a preliminary 
and indispensable requirement before the young man is 
admitted to Holy Orders. On the whole I stand, without 
hesitation, to my proposition, that the doctrines of the 
English Church are not only more simply, but more fully, 
assuredly, more winningly, taught in our Liturgy and our 
Formularies than in our Articles." 

The very elaborate work of Mr. Taylor Innes, entitled 
the " Law of Creeds," is exhaustive for Scotland ; including 
both the Established Church and the various sects of Pro- 
testant Dissenters. It also incidentally takes notice of some 
of the more critical decisions on heresy cases in the English 
Church. Mr. Innes properly points out, that the abolition 
of Subscription is compatible with compulsory adherence to 
Articles. The relaxation of the forms of Subscription in 
the English Church, by the Act of 1865, gave a certain 
amount of relief to the consciences of the clergy, but left 
them as much exposed as ever to suits for heresy. 

For the usages of the Reformed Churches, on the Conti- 
nent, and in x\merica, a mass of valuable information has 
been furnished in the Report of the Second General Council 
of the Presbyterian Alliance, convened at Philadelphia, 
September, 1880. At the previous meeting of the Council, 
held at Edinburgh, July, 1877, a Committee was appointed 
to Report on the Creeds and Subscriptions in use among the 
various bodies forming the Alliance. It is unnecessary to 
refer to the answers given in to the Committee's Queries, 
from Great Britain and Ireland, except to complete the 
history of the Presbyterian Church of England, so long 
distinguished for the abeyance of clerical subscription. 



324 Notes and References on Tests. 

It was in 1755, that the Presbytery of Newcastle made a 
movement towards disclaiming the Arian, Socinian and 
other heresies, but without proposing a Confession. In 
1784, the same Presbytery adopted a Formula accepting the 
Westminster Confession; in 1802, however, subscription to 
the Formula was rescinded. Through Scottish influence, 
the return to the Westminster Confession was gradually 
brought about in the early part of the century. That Con- 
fession was formally adopted by the Presbytery of Newcastle 
in 1824 ; and since 1836, all the ministers of the body have 
been required to accept it in the most unqualified manner. 

The Calvinistic Methodists of Wales drew up, in 1823, 
a Confession consisting of forty-four articles, agreeing sub- 
stantially with the Westminster Confession. Subscription 
is not required : but the clergy, prior to ordination, make a 
statement of their doctrinal views, which amounts to nearly 
the same thing. Like the Roman Catholic Church, the 
Methodists depend upon discipline rather than upon Sub- 
scription. 

The Congregational Churches take up almost the same 
attitude towards their clergy. There is no subscription ; but 
any great deviation from the prevailing views of the body 
leads to forfeiture of the position of brotherhood, and 
possibly also to severance from the charge of a congrega- 
tion. Still, the absence of a binding and penal test is 
favourable to freedom, from the present tendency of men's 
minds in that direction. 

As regards the Presbyterian Church in the United States 
of America, we find that the first Presbytery was constituted 
in 1705. No formal statement of doctrine was considered 
necessary till the lapse of about a quarter of a century, when 
the spread of Arianism in Englarrd urged the Synod of 
Philadelphia to pass what was called the " Adopting Act" in 
1729, by which _they hoped to exclude from American 



French Protestant Churches. 325 

churches British ministers tainted with Arian views. They 
agreed " that all the ministers of this Synod, or that shall 
hereafter be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their 
agreement in and approbation of the Confession of' Faith, 
with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of 
Divines at Westminster, as being, in all the essential and 
necessary articles, good forms of sound words and systems 
of Christian doctrine," "and we do also adopt the said 
confession and the catechisms as the Confession of our 
Faith". 

The formula subscribed by ministers at their ordination 
is, however, less stringent than that in use in the Churches 
of Scotland. 

Turning next to the Continent we may refer, first, to the 
French Protestant Church, now consisting of two divisions 
— (1) The Reformed Church united to the State, and (2) 
The Union of the Evangelical Churches. 

The Gallic Confession, styled " La Rochelle," the joint 
work of Calvin and Chaudien, was adopted as the doctrinal 
standard of the Reformed French Churches in their first 
national synod, which met at Paris in May, 1559, and was 
revised and confirmed by the seventh synod, which as- 
sembled at La Rochelle under the presidency of Theodore 
Beza in 157 1. It is composed of forty articles, which re- 
produce faithfully the Calvinistic doctrine. But it is not 
accepted as infallible ; the final authority, in the light of 
which successive synods may reform it, is the Bible. 

" The reformed doctrine, as sanctioned by the Confession 
of La Rochelle, was, in its essential features, recognised and 
professed by all Protestant France ; and, notwithstanding 
its sufferings and internal dissensions, the Church during the 
first quarter of the 17th century held its own course and 
remained faithful to itself. A consistory, that of Caen, had, 



326 Notes a?id References on Tests. 

even as late as 1840, restored in the churches of its juris- 
diction the Confession of La Rochelle in its full vigour. 
Little by little, however, under the influence of the natural- 
istic philosophy of the 18th century, the negative criticism 
of Germany, and above all the religious indifference which 
followed the repose which the Church was enjoying after 
two centuries of persecution, the Confession of Faith as 
well as the discipline fell into disuse. It was never really 
abrogated. . . . However, it is a practical fact that the 
partisans of one of the two sections which to-day divide 
the Reformed Church of France, not only do not consider 
themselves bound by the Confession of La Rochelle, but, 
tending more and more towards Rationalism, and seeing in 
Protestantism only the religion of free thought, have come 
to reject the great miracles of the gospel, and to demand 
for their pastors, in the bosom of the Church, unlimited 
freedom in teaching. While on the one hand the sovereignty 
of the Holy Scriptures is claimed, on the other is held the 
rule of individual conscience." 

The majority of the official synod which met at Paris 
in September, 1848, refused to put an end to the doctrinal 
disorder in the Church by establishing in the Church a 
clear and positive law of faith. The minority, regarding 
the adverse vote as an official sufferance of indifference 
on doctrinal matters, separated themselves from their 
brethren, and founded the " Union of the Evangelical 
Churches of France ". 

In 1872, " in the face of attacks directly aimed, in the 
bosom of the Church, at the unity of her doctrine," the 
thirtieth general synod, assembled at Paris, drew up, not a 
complete Confession of Faith, but a declaration determining 
the doctrinal limits of the Church, and proclaiming " the 
sovereign authority of the Holy Scriptures with regard to 
belief, and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the only 



General Synod of Paris in 1872. 327 

begotten Son of God, who died for our sins and rose again 
for our justification '\* 

Down to 1824, new pastors indicated their adherence to 
the Confession of Faith by signature. In 1824, however, 
signature was replaced by a solemn promise. " Since that 
time different formulas have been used at the will of the 
pastors performing the ordination, without any one of them 
having the sanction of a synod, and without the manner of 
adherence having been expressly stipulated." 

"Since the Synod of 1872, in ordinations over »which 
pastors attached to the Synodal Church have presided, can- 
didates are required to conform formally, in the presence of 
the congregation, to the declaration of faith adopted by the 
Synod. Article 2, of the complete law, declares : ' Every 
candidate for holy orders must, before receiving ordination, 
affirm that he adheres to the faith of the Church as stated 
by the general synod '." 

Theological professors were sometimes appointed without 
conditions. Still they were not permitted to teach doctrines 
in glaring contradiction to the general belief of the Churches. 
For example, in 181 2, M. Gasc, professor of theology at 
Montauban, attacked in his lectures the doctrine of the 
Trinity, whereupon several consistories required him either 
to retract his opinions or to resign his post. M. Gasc 
retracted his opinions. 

" The Evangelical Churches of France, composed of 
members who have made an explicit and individual pro- 
fession of faith, and who recognise in religious matters no 
other authority than that of Jesus Christ, the only and 
sovereign head of the Church," accept the Old and New 



* The debates in this Synod were conducted with the highest ability on both 
sides. Guizot took a part on the side of orthodoxy. The published Report will be 
found abstracted in the British Quarterly, No. CXIV. 



328 Notes and References on Tests. 

Testaments as directly inspired by God and so constituting 
the only and infallible rule of faith and life. 

The Churches of Switzerland have the pre-eminence in 
the relaxation or disuse of Tests. The following is a sum- 
mary of their practice : — 

The Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud. 

According to the ecclesiastical law of May 19, 1863 
(slightly modified by a decree of December 2, 1874), the 
National Church of the Canton of Vaud " desires chiefly 
that its members should lead a Christian life," and " admits 
no other rule of instruction than the Word of God contained 
in the Holy Scriptures ". Every candidate for the ministry 
is required by the ecclesiastical law of December 14, 1839, 
to " swear that he will discharge conscientiously the duties 
which the National Reformed 'Evangelical Church imposes 
upon its ministers, and that he will preach the Word of God 
in its purity and integrity as it is contained in the Holy 
Scriptures ". " When accusation is brought against any 
minister on the ground of doctrine, the proceedings are dis- 
tinctly marked ; but in reality it is simply required that ' the 
jurymen give a conscientious verdict '." 

The Free Evangelical Church of the Canton of Vaud 
requires that candidates for the ministry be examined as to 
their religious life, their calling to the ministry, their doctrine 
and their ecclesiastical principles by a committee of the 
synodical commission, with pastors and elders. After 
examination the candidate must " declare his cordial ad- 
hesion to the doctrines and institutions of the Free Church". 
This pledge is verbal. 

Independent Evangelical Church of Neuchatet. 
The ancient Reformed Church of Neuchatel never put 



Churches of Switzerland. 329 

forth any special Confession of Faith. The assembly of 
Pastors, the governing body of the Church, down to 1848, 
accepted the Holy Scriptures, the forms used in baptism 
and the communion, and the Apostles' Creed as fully ade- 
quate to express the faith of the Church. The Synod, who 
took over the government of the Church in 1848, maintained 
the same position, refusing in 1857 to sanction an abridged 
Confession. 

On May 20, 1873, the Grand Council of the Republic 
and Canton of Neuchatel passed a new law regulating the 
relation of Church and State. Article 12 says: "Liberty 
of conscience in matters of religion is inviolable ; it may 
neither be fettered by regulations, vows, or promises, by 
disciplinary penalties, by formulas or a creed, nor by any 
measures whatsoever ". 

Hence resulted the separation of those that formed the 
Independent Evangelical Church of Neuchatel, which, in 
1874, adopted a Confession " acknowledging as the only 
source and rule of its faith the Old and New Testaments, 
and proclaiming the great truths of salvation contained in 
the Apostles' Creed ". The ministers, on ordination, take 
an oath to advance the honour and glory of God above all 
things ; to maintain his word at the risk of life, body, and 
property ; to be in unity with the brethren in the doctrines 
of religion and in the holy ministry • and to avoid all sec- 
tarianism and schism in the Church. 

National Protestant Church of Geneva. 

During the 16th century, from 1536 onwards, the National 
Protestant Church of Geneva was in constant turmoil through 
the insistence on, and the opposition to, the doctrines laid 
down by Calvin in his Confession of Faith and System of 
Ecclesiastical Ordinances. The 1 7th century is marked by the 
conflicts of Calvinism and Arminianism. After numerous 



330 Notes and References on Tests. 

variations, the oath of consecration was, in June 1725, 
changed back to the form provided by the Ecclesiastical 
Ordinance of 1576 : "You swear to hold the doctrine of 
the holy prophets and apostles, as it is contained in the 
books of the Old and New Testaments, of which doctrine 
our Catechism is a summary ". This oath remained in force 
for nearly a century, till 1806. "It was asserted in the 
discussion (in the Assembly) that no one should be forced 
to follow entirely Calvin's Catechism. It is further ex- 
pected that the candidates for the ministry should be 
requested not to discuss in the pulpit any striking or useless 
matter which might tend to disturb the peace. At this 
time, the Confession of Faith of the 17th century was 
abolished to return to that of the 16th century, interpreting 
the latter with much freedom. The Lower Council ratified 
this decision, but ordered the Assembly to keep the most 
absolute silence upon this subject, especially in the presence 
of strangers." In 1788, the Assembly adopted a new Cate- 
chism, containing numerous points of divergence from the 
orthodox Catechism of Calvin, which it superseded with the 
sanction of the Lower Council. In 1806, the new formula 
of consecration threw out the Catechism ; it ran thus— 
" You promise to teach divine truth as it is contained in 
the books of the Old and New Testaments, of which we 
have an abridgment in the Apostles' Creed". In 1810, 
after long deliberation, there was published a revision in 
the latitudinarian and utilitarian sense of the Larger Cate- 
chism. In the same year, the Apostles' Creed was thrown 
out of the pledge of the ministers, which now read thus : 
" You promise . , . to preach, in its purity, the gospel 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, to recognise as the only infallible 
rule of faith and conduct the word of God, as it is contained 
in the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments ". 
Presently, however, in 18 13, a religious revival led to dan- 



Historical Changes in the Church of Geneva. 331 

gerous discussions, and the ministers were bound " to abstain 
from all sectarian spirit, to avoid all that would create 
any schism and break the union of the Church " — an addi- 
tion suppressed towards 1850; and in 181 7, they were 
required to pledge themselves to abstain from discussing 
four points in particular — the manner of the union of the 
divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ ; 
original sin ; the manner in which grace operates, or saving 
grace ; and predestination ; and, if led to utter their thoughts 
on any one of these subjects, they were " to do so without 
too much positiveness, to avoid expressions foreign to the 
Holy Scriptures, and to use, as much as possible, the terms 
which they employ". In 1847, the organisation of the 
Protestant worship was set forth in a special law, and in 
1849, the Consistory called in accordance with this, adopted 
an organic rule for the Church. According to Article 74, 
the functionaries of the Church may be subjected to discip- 
line " in case of teaching, preaching, or publicly professing 
any doctrine that may bring scandal upon the Church ". 
Various modifications followed. In 1874 (April 26), Article 
123 was made to declare that "each pastor teaches and 
preaches freely on his own responsibility, and no restraint 
can be put upon this liberty either by the Confession of 
Faith or by the liturgic formulas ". In the end of the same 
year, however (Oct. 3), the State Council promulgated a 
new organic law, " in virtue of which a pastor can either be 
suspended or dismissed by the Consistory or by the Council 
of State for dogmatic motives". In 1875, the pastor obtained 
the right to use in his religious teaching any catechetical 
manual he preferred, provided he informed the Consistory 
of his choice. The use of the liturgical prayers, published 
by the Consistory, became optional. The pastors were now 
required merely to declare before God that "they will teach 
and preach conscientiously, according to their lights and 



33 2 Notes and References on Tests. 

faith the Christian truth contained in our holy books". The 
liturgical collection, published by the Consistory in 1875, 
contains two series of formulas, expressed in a dogmatic 
sense on the one hand, and in a liberal sense on the other. 
The Apostles' Creed is optional. 

Free Evangelical Church of Geneva. 

The Free Evangelical Church of Geneva demands only a 
formal adherence to its Profession of Faith from the elders 
(including the ministers) and the deacons. "Some of these 
officers have even been permitted to hold certain reserves 
on such or such article." 

Germanic Switzerland. 

Pastor Bernard of Berne, having enumerated the sym- 
bolical writings of Germanic Switzerland, says : " For cen- 
turies the pastors were obliged to sign them, although it is 
true that the Second Confession of Helvetic Faith was 
alone recognised as the general rule imposed upon pastors. 
The signing of the Formula Consensus was exacted only 
temporarily (being discarded about 1720). It has been 
only from the beginning of this century that, under the 
influence of rationalism, pastors have been required to 
preach the Gospel merely according to the principles of the 
Helvetic Confession. To-day we find all confession of 
faith abolished in our Germanic Swiss Churches. Pastors 
preach what pleases them. Chosen by the parishes, they 
owe to them solely an avowal of their doctrines." 

The Hungarian Reformed Church has a. singular history, 
in respect of Creeds. The Report of the Council goes very 
minutely into the detail of eleven confessions held succes- 
sively by that church. Of these, there survive two — the 



German Churches. 333 

Helvetic Confession and the Catechism of Heidelberg, by 
which ministers and office-bearers are still bound. 

Next as to Germany. As the several states have their 
separate ecclesiastical usages, the same rule does not apply 
everywhere. For an extreme case of absence of tolera- 
tion, we may refer to the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg. 
Lutheranism is the established religion ; and the Duchy is 
the stronghold of mediaeval conservatism both in politics 
and in religion. The removal of Baumgarten from the 
University of Rostock is an example in point ; and the 
decree is so characteristic and illustrative that it deserves to 
be given at length. 

" We have to our sincere regret been given to understand 
that, in your writings published in and since the year 1854, 
you have advanced doctrines and principles that are in the 
most important points at variance with the doctrines and 
principles of the symbolic books of our Evangelical-Lutheran 
Church and of our rules of Church Discipline, to such an 
extent as to amount to an attempt to shake to the very 
foundation the basis whereon these doctrines and principles 
and our church rest. In order to reach more exact cer- 
tainty on these things, we have assembled our Consistory to 
consider this matter, and from them we have received the 
annexed opinion, by which the above-mentioned view has 
been fully confirmed. 

" Whereas, then, it is required by our Church Ordinances 
of 1552 and 1602 (1650) that the Christian doctrine shall 
be taught ' pure and unchanged,' as it is contained in Holy 
Writ, the general symbols of the Christian Church, in Dr. 
Luther's Catechism and Confession, and in the Augsburg 
Confession of 1530, and that, if an academical teacher fall 
away from these, he shall be proceeded against ; whereas, 



334 Notes and References on Tests. 

further, in Articles II. to IV. of the Reversals of 162 1, the 
sovereigns gave the States the assurance that in the Uni- 
versity of Rostock there should be neither appointed nor 
tolerated any other teachers but such as should be attached 
to the Augsburg Confession and the Lutheran religion ; the 
establishment of the University of Rostock on the pure 
doctrine of the Christian symbols and of the Augsburg 
Confession has been repeated in § 4 of the Regulations 
upon the relations of the town of Rostock to the State 
University of 1827, and once again in § 1 of the Statutes 
of the University of 1837 ; no less do the statutes of the 
Theological Faculty of Rostock of 1564, and the later 
Regulation as to this Faculty of 1791, bind the members 
of the Faculty to expound the writings of the Prophets and 
the Apostles in the sense laid down in the general Christian 
symbols, in the Augsburg Confession, the Smalkald Articles, 
and the writings of Dr. Luther; your appointment of 31st 
August, 1850, referred you to the Statutes of the University 
and of the Theological Faculty, and also directed you to com- 
port yourself in accordance with the rule and line of the 
revealed word of God, the unchanged Augsburg Confession, 
the formula concordice, and all the other symbolic books 
received in our (lands) country, as well as with the Meck- 
lenburg Church Ordinances relating to these, without any 
innovation ; you also on your induction on the 19th of 
Oct., 1850, bound yourself by oath to the duties contained 
in your appointment and to the Statutes of the University 
and of the Theological Faculty ; 

" We can the shorter time entrust you with the vocation of 
an academic teacher of the Evangelical-Lutheran Theology 
as you have united with your backslidings in theological 
doctrine at the same time political doctrines of the most 
delicate kind, deduced relatively from those ; and we will, 
therefore — after hearing of our High Consistory, and after 



Removal of Baumgarten from Rostock. 335 

the foregoing resolution of our ministry according to § 10, 
Lit. H. of the Ordinance of 4th April, 1853, relating to the 
organisation of the Ministers — hereby remove you from the 
office, hitherto filled by you, of an ordinary Professor of 
Theology in our State University of Rostock." 

In Prussia, the Clergy, and especially the University 
Professors of Theology, enjoy more liberty than in Meck- 
lenburg ; but they are not wholly secure from the attempts 
of the Church Courts to enforce discipline against heretical 
teaching. The following are recent cases. 

1. The St. Jacobi Gemeinde (parish) in Berlin, belonging, 
as is the rule in Prussia, to the " Unirte Kirche "■ — a fusion 
of the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches — in 1877, 
chose, as its pastor, Lie. Horzbach. The Consistory ot 
Brandenburg, within whose jurisdiction Berlin lies, refused 
to admit him on account of his heterodox views. By the 
ecclesiastical law, a pastor translated from one consistory to 
another, has to be approved of by the one he enters ; which 
gives an opportunity of exercising a disciplinary power, not 
beyond what is possessed by the consistory where he has 
once been admitted, but more opportunely and conveniently 
brought into play. St. Jacobi parish, having apparently a 
taste for advanced views, next chose a Dr. Schramm ; but 
he too was rejected on the same grounds. The third selec- 
tion fell on Pastor Werner (Guben) ; this was confirmed by 
the Consistory, but was quashed by the " Oberkirchenrath," 
or supreme ecclesiastical authority of the country, located in 
Berlin. The parish was now considered to have forfeited 
its right of election; and a pastor was chosen for it by the 
Oberkirchenrath. Happily his views were not too strict for 
the congregation, and peace was restored. In all the three 
instances, the rejection took place on the complaint of a 
small orthodox minority in the parish. 



336 Notes and References on Tests. 

2. Rev. Luhr, pastor at Eckenforda, in the Prussian Pro- 
vince of Schleswig-Holstein, was accused of heresy, and 
deprived by the Provincial Consistory of Kiel in December, 
1 88 1. Pastor Luhr appealed to the Berlin Oberkirchenrath, 
who reversed the sentence, and let him off with a reproof for 
the use of incautious language. 

There have been two still more notorious heresy hunts : 
one, the case of Dr. Sydow in Berlin ; the other, Pastor 
Kalthoff, who was ultimately deposed, and is now minister 
of an independent congregation in Berlin. 

Both the central ecclesiastical authority and the provincial 
consistories, being nominated by the Government, reflect 
the religious tendencies of the Emperor and his Ministers 
for the time being. At present, these are probably behind 
the country at large in point of liberality. 

Next to Switzerland, Holland is most distinguished for 
advanced views as to the remission of Tests, and the liberty 
of the clergy. A very complete account of the history and 
present position of the Dutch sects is given in a pamphlet, 
entitled "The Ecclesiastical Institutions of Holland, by 
Philip H. Wicksteed, M.A. (Williams & Norgate) ". 

It is pretty well known that in doctrinal views the majority 
in the Dutch Church is Calvinist ; while a minority forms 
the " Modern School," a school partaking of the rationalism 
of our century in matters of faith. The battle of the Con- 
fessions began in 1842, and is not yet finished. In this 
year an attempt was made to revive the binding authority 
of the old confessions. The General Synod in that and the 
following years successfully resisted the movement. Jn 
1854, a new formula of subscription applicable to candidates 
for the ministry was introduced, less stringent and more 
liberal than the old one. The orthodoxy party endeavoured 
to make it more stringent, the liberals proposed to make it 



Subscription in the Dutch Church. 337 

still less so. In 1874, a majority of the General Synod 
passed the following declaration : — 

" The doctrine contained in the Netherland Confession, 
the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of the Synod 
of Dort, forms the historical foundation of the Reformed 
Church of the Netherlands. 

" Inasmuch as this doctrine is not confessed with suffi- 
cient unanimity by the community, there can, under the 
existing circumstances, be no possibility of ' maintaining the 
doctrine ' in the ecclesiastical sense. The community, 
building on the principles of the Church, as manifested in 
her origin and development, continues to confess her Chris- 
tian faith, and thereby to form the expression which may 
in course of time once more become the adequate and 
unanimous Confession of the Church. 

" Meantime, care for the interests of the Christian Church 
in general and the Reformed in particular, quickening of 
Christian religion and morality, increase of religious know- 
ledge, preservation of order and unity, and furtherance of 
love for King and Fatherland — are ever the main object of 
all to whom any ecclesiastical office is entrusted, and no one 
can be rejected as a member or a teacher who, complying 
with all other requirements, declares himself to be convinced 
in his own conscience that in compliance with the above- 
named principles, he may belong to the Reformed Church 
of the Netherlands."* 



* Mr. Wicksteed makes the following curious remarK : — " I am often asked 
whether the ' Moderns' are Unitarians. The question is rather startling. It is as if 
one were asked whether the majority of English astronomers had ceased to uphold 
the Ptolemaic system yet. The best answer I can give is a reference to the chapter on 
' God ' in a popular work by Dr. Matthes which has run through four editions. In 
this chapter there is not a word about the Trinity, but at the close occurs this foot- 
note : ' On the antiquated doctrine of the Trinity, see the fourteenth note at the end 
of the book,' — where, accordingly, the doctrine is expounded and its confusions 
pointed out rather with the calm interest of the antiquarian than the eagerness of the 
controversialist." 



338 Notes and References on Tests. 

This declaration, however, did not pass the Provincial 
Church Courts, which possess the right of veto ; and the 
law therefore remained as it was. But, in 1881, a new 
proposal for altering the formula of subscription passed the 
General Synod. Next year, it was definitely approved, and 
is now the law of the church. According to it, licentiates 
to the Ministry, on being admitted by the Provincial Church 
Courts, are made to promise that they will labour in the 
Ministry according to their vocation with zeal and faithful- 
ness ; that they will further with all their power the interests 
of the kingdom of God, and, so far as consistent therewith, 
the interests of the Dutch Reformed Church, and give 
obedience to the regulations of that Church. 

There is, however, both in orthodox and in semi-orthodox 
circles, a wide-spread dissatisfaction with this amount of 
latitude, and fears are entertained for its continuance. 



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parison and contrast in a marked degree. Mr McMaster has produced one of 
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taining quality of which is conspicuous beyond that of any work of its kind."— 
Gazette. 

New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS, 

A GEOGRAPHICAL READER. A Collection of Geographical 
Descriptions and Narrations, from the best Writers in English Lit- 
erature. Classified and arranged to meet the wants of Geographical 
Students, and the higher grades of reading classes. By James 
Johonnot, author of " Principles and Practice of Teaching." 12mo, 
cloth, $1.25. 

" Mr. Johonnot has made a good hook, which, if judiciously used, will stop 
the immense waste of time now spent in most schools in the study of geography 
to little purpose. The volume has a good numher of appropriate illustrations, 
and is printed and hound in almost faultless style and taste."— National Journal 
of Education. 

It is original and unique in conception and execution. It is varied in style, 
and treats of every variety of geographical topic. It supplements the geograph- 
ical text-books, and, by giving additional interest to the study, it leads the pupil 
to more extensive geographical reading and research. It is not simply a collec- 
tion of dry statistics and outline descriptions, but vivid narrations of great liter- 
ary merit, that convey useful information and promote general culture. It con- 
forms to the philosophic ideas upon which the new education is based. Its 
selections are from the best standard authorities. It is embellished with numer- 
ous and appropriate illustrations. 

A NATURAL HISTORY READER, for Schools and Homes. 

Beautifully illustrated. Compiled and edited by James Johonnot. 

12mo, cloth, $1.25. 

" The natural turn that children have for the country, and for birds and beasts, 
wild and tame, is taken advantage of very wisely by Mr. Johonnot, who has had 
experience in teaching and in making school-books. His selections are generally 
excellent. Articles by renowned naturalists, and interesting papers by men 
who, if not renowned, can put things pointedly, alternate with serious and 
humorous verse. ' The Popular Science Monthly' has furnished much material. 
The ' Atlantic' and the works of John Burroughs are contributors also. There 
are illustrations, and the compiler has some sensible advice to offer teachers in 
regard to the way in which to interest young people in matters relating to na- 
ture."— New York Times. 

AN HISTORICAL READER, for Classes in Academies, High- 
Schools, and Grammar-Schools. By Henry E. Shepherd, M. A. 
12mo, cloth, $1.25. 

" This book is one of the most important text-books issued within our recol- 
lection. The preface is a powerful attack upon the common method of teaching 
history by means of compendiams and abridgments. Professor Shepherd has 
1 long advocated the beginning of history-teaching by the use of graphic and lively 
sketches of those illustrious characters around whom the historic interest of each 
age is concentrated.' This volume is an attempt to embody this idea in a form 
for practical use. Irving, Motley, Macaulay, Prescott, Greene, Proude, Momm- 
sen, Guizot, and Gibbon are among the authors represented; and the subjects 
treated cover nearly all the greatest events and greatest characters of time. The 
book is one of indescribable interest. The boy or girl who is not fascinated by 
it must be dull indeed. Blessed be the day when it shall be introduced into our 
high-schools, in the place of the dry and wearisome ' facts and figures ' of the 
' general history ' 1 "—Iowa Normal Monthly. 



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D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



FAIR WORDS ABOUT FAIR WOMAN, gathered from the 
Poets by 0. B. Bunce. With nine Illustrations from designs by 
Will H. Low. Crown 8vo, cloth, extra gilt, $3.00. 

A collection of poems in exaltation of woman, gathered from English, Ameri- 
can, Italian, French, German, and other poets, choicely illustrated aud elegantly 
bound. 

"A pretty and gallant volume."— Boston Journal. 

"A happier title was never conceived, nor a better book than that implies 
was never made."— Mail and Express. 

" One of the handsomest of modern anthologies."— Boston Courier. 

" Mr Bunce presents the reader to an ideal gathering of pleasant people who 
meet during eight evenings to hear one of their number read selections of grace- 
ful flattering sweet, comfortable, enticing, pathetic, rhapsodical, chivalrous 
poems and parts of poems, which have been said and sung by poets in all ages. 
; . . A delightful collection of verse."— Philadelphia Press. 

"A novel and most appropriate present from a lover to his betrothed, or a 
husband to his wife."— Journal of Commerce. 

"A very charming volume."— New York Times. 

"The selections are admirable, the illustrations beautiful, and the printing 
and binding artistic and elegant in the extreme."— New York Commercial Adver- 
tiser. 

" A veritable cyclopaedia of homage and compliment, and may serve as a 
perennial garden from which lovers and dutiful worshipers for generations to come 
may cull rare flowers for the fair queens of their reverence."— Home Journal. 

BRYANT LEAFLETS. Selections from the Poems of Bryant on 
Leaflets, for Schools, Homes, and Libraries. With Illustrations. 
Compiled by Josephine Hodgdon. 8vo. Book and Leaflets, 60 
cents ; or separate, 30 cents each. 

THE LOVE POEMS OF LOUIS BARNAVAL. Edited, with 
an Introduction, by Charles De Kay. 12mo, cloth, $1.50. 

THE CITY OF SUCCESS AND OTHER POEMS. By 

Henry Abbey. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50. 

THE PARCHMENT SHAKSPERE COMPLETE. A new 

edition of Shakspere's Works. In twelve volumes. Bound in 
parchment, uncut, gilt top. 16mo, $1.25 each. In sets, half calf, 
$30.00 ; full calf, $40.00. 
This edition is printed with new type cast expressly for the work, and in a 
form and style which give it peculiar elegance. The text is mainly that of 
Delius, following closely the folio edition of 1623, the chief difference consisting 
in a more sparinguse of punctuation than that employed by the well-known 
German editor, wherever a variant reading is adopted, some good and rec- 
ognized Shakspearean critic has been followed. In no case is a new rendering 
of the text proposed ; nor has it been thought necessary to distract the reader's 
attention by notes or comments. 

" There is perhaps no edition in which the works of Shakspere can be read 
in such luxury of type, aud quiet distinction of form, as this."— Pall Mall Gazette. 



New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



THE LIFE AND WORKS OF 

William Cullen Bryant. 

Edited by PARKE GODWIN. 

L 

A BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, with Extracts from 
his Private Correspondence. By Pabke Godwin. With Two Portraits on 
Steel : one from a Painting 1 by Morse, taken in 1825, and one from a Photograph 
taken in 1873. In two vols., square 8vo. Cloth, $6.00. 

Containing' a full account, from authentic sources, of the poet's ancestry ; of his boy- 
hood among the Hampshire hills ; of his early poems ; of his ten years 1 life as a country 
lawyer; of his long editorial career in New York; of his intercourse with contempora- 
ries; of his travels abroad and at home; of the origin of many of his poems; of his 
political opinions ; of his speeches and addresses ; and of the honors he received. 

" Perhaps the most entertaining and delightful memoir of the present generation, 
combining, as it does, the charm of the poet and the force of a publicist ; the freshness 
and beauty of the country, with the wealth and refinement of the city; every variety 
of intellectual life • social and public questions; brilliant conversation and rich corre- 
spondence ; travel in foreign lands ; scenes in the eye of a poet and philosopher — all 
these and a host of other subjects, admirably selected, arranged, and touched, make up 
two charming volumes, which we have read with great interest." — New York Ob- 
server. 

" Mr. Parke Godwin has done his work of love with remarkable completeness. 
The biography is more than its name implies. Mr. Bryant's life was so closely inter- 
woven with the literature and politics of the country that Mr. Godwin's work becomes, 
in effect, a history of the development of thought in the United States for the last 
sixty years. On this account Mr. Godwin's latest labors are of extraordinary value, the 
full measure of which can not now be estimated."— New York Journal of Commerce. 

II. 

THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. In 

two vols., square 8vo, uniform with the " Biography." Cloth, gilt top, $6.00 ; 

half calf or half morocco, $12.00. 

This edition of Mr. Bryant's poems contains : 1. All Mr. Bryant's poems that have 

hitherto appeared, with his latest corrections. 2. Sixty or more never before collected, 

including some thirty beautiful hymns, and a companion piece to "Sella" and "The 

Little People of the Snow." S. Copious notes by Parke Godwin, giving various 

changes in the more important poems, an account of their origin, and other interesting 

information. 

" No more fitting memorial of a poet could be devised by ingenuity and affection 
combined than an edition of his works in a form so beautiful as this. No finer speci- 
mens of book-making have ever issued from the American press than these volumes. 
The type is large, the press- work simply perfect, the margins wide and uncut except 
at the top. and the binding rich and tasteful. Many so-called editions de luxe are 
inferior to this in real excellence. The time has not yet come for a just estimate of 
Bryanfs true place as a poet. But is it not something to have earned the distinction 
of being the only American poet of a century who has written blank verse that will live 
in literature alongside of that of Wordsworth and Milton ? "—New lork Examiner. 

III. 
PROSE WRITINGS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. Id two vols., 
square 8vo, uniform with the " Biography." Cloth, gilt top, $6.00. 

CONTAINING ! 

Literary Essays. I Sketches of Travel. 

Narratives. Occasional Addresses. 

Commemorative Discourses. I Editorial Comments and Criticisms. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street, 



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